Through a marketing internship in her hometown, Dalton gained confidence, learned skills and is fully prepared for her next opportunity.Kyosha Dalton hails from Eden, North Carolina, a rural town in Rockingham County. Wanting to give back to her community, she found an opportunity to intern in her hometown through Poole College’s Business HIRE program. “My role as a rural intern not only gave me the opportunity to develop needed skills for my future career,” she says, “but it let me connect my hometown with my ...
Through a marketing internship in her hometown, Dalton gained confidence, learned skills and is fully prepared for her next opportunity.
Kyosha Dalton hails from Eden, North Carolina, a rural town in Rockingham County. Wanting to give back to her community, she found an opportunity to intern in her hometown through Poole College’s Business HIRE program. “My role as a rural intern not only gave me the opportunity to develop needed skills for my future career,” she says, “but it let me connect my hometown with my second home at NC State.”
Dalton worked as a marketing intern at Eden Drug, a pharmacy that’s been part of her community for over four decades. She managed their Instagram and Facebook pages and helped grow their platform with promotional content and campaigns. She also created a year’s worth of newspaper ads and digital signage material. When not producing material, she also managed the content calendar and research partnership opportunities.
While she approached the process merely looking for a marketing internship anywhere for any company, her time at Eden Drug changed how she’ll approach her next opportunity. “After working with such incredible people and doing work that truly means something to my team, I want to choose opportunities that allow me to make positive change. Whether that be in my company, county, or state, I want to do something with meaning. Not just do something for the sake of experience.”
“My role as a rural intern not only gave me the opportunity to develop needed skills for my future career, but it let me connect my hometown with my second home at NC State.”
Dalton gives special credit to her manager, Dianne Hale. “She does it all, from HR work to marketing to operations management and beyond,” she says. “Hearing her stories from her time at Eden Drug and beyond has inspired me to always put my all into the work I do. She managed being a friend, mentor, and manager to me flawlessly, and I aspire to be the same type of manager once I get to that place in my career.
“Before, my confidence in interviews and new settings always came from a place of survival rather than true confidence in my abilities,” she says. “The entire process of Business HIRE, from interview to internship work, has taught me to be confident in my work and myself rather than just hopeful I was portraying myself right.” She gives immense credit to the staff mentors at her team at Eden Drug for that, saying that “their support and true trust in my abilities has helped me more than they know.”
She also came into the internship with no graphic design skills, admitting that “the best you could get out of me was a Canva template.” After a summer working with design software, “I’ve been able to not only create my own graphics from scratch, but also learn graphic design rules that I must take into consideration when creating in future professional roles.
Her advice to any student considering the program is to not limit themselves. “Don’t tell yourself that you’re too young, too inexperienced, or too new to the process.” She participated as a freshman and says “the program understood that and worked with me from where I was.” She also encourages anyone looking up internships to reach out to their town’s chamber of commerce. “Your dream internship can come from unlikely places.”
Because of success stories like Dalton’s, the Business HIRE Program is now transitioning into the Small Business Internship Program, with the generous support of a Poole College donor.