Sprinternships™ are paid micro internships that represent an innovative approach to the persistent lack of gender diversity in the tech sector. The program bridges the gap between college and careers for a racially and economically diverse group of undergraduate women and non-binary students, who face unique barriers to entry into this fast-growing field.
Published
02/27/2023
“I’ve never seen anything like this level of enthusiasm,” says Corrine Doron, the Director of our Sprinternship™ program. Doron worked in workforce development for many years prior to joining Break Through Tech and is consistently struck by just how much our industry partners love our flagship program, and how impressed they are with the students they host.
Sprinternships™ are paid micro internships that represent an innovative approach to the persistent lack of gender diversity in the tech sector. The program bridges the gap between college and careers for a racially and economically diverse group of undergraduate women and non-binary students, who face unique barriers to entry into this fast-growing field.
Looking at the cohorts of Sprinterns™ that our partners in New York City and the Washington, DC area hosted in January (our next round of cohorts will be happening in Chicago and Miami in May), it’s clear that just as student participation increases, so too does the appreciation that companies feel for Sprintern contributions.
Here are just a few quotes from our industry partners:
“The ideas and work completed in just a few weeks by Sprinterns meaningfully contributed to the company goals.”
– Kathleen Kadziolka, VP of Technology, CVS Health
“Even though it’s a very short program, the team managed to understand key business concepts and deliver a full stack solution to the challenge provided.”
– Clementina Calvo, VP Software Engineer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“Our Sprinterns were so amazing and really contributed so much to our organization! Our only wish is that they could have stayed with us longer :).”
– Lila Thomas, VP of Brand & Strategic Partnerships, Boss Beauties
“This is the 5th year UNICC has hosted Sprinterns, and we would like to welcome more and more Sprinterns to bring creative ideas and youth power to UNICC.”
-Denian Ouyang, Junior Communications Officer, United Nations International Computing Centre
And here are just a few examples of the kinds of projects that Sprinterns™ tackle as part of a cohort of five students, working over a three-week period:
- Develop the user interface for tracking platform releases with the ability to track the list of changes planned with a given release. Currently, this is managed in GitLab but we want to decouple this from GitLab and have a separate user interface developed using React and Node Js primarily.
- Over the next three weeks, your team will follow the CRISP-DM methodology to analyze various pre-identified datasets provided to you and develop an innovative proposal to us on what the firm and its employees/partners can do to reduce their carbon footprint in the use of in-city travel and commuting.
- By working with our data science, IT, product, design, and content teams, we would like you to create a proposal for how we can start to reach new users in the 18-25 age range and what features, subscriptions, etc they would look to us to provide that would add value to their experience.
Find out more about the challenges our Sprinterns™ undertake over the course of three weeks.
See what our diverse, talented students can do for your business. Join us for an upcoming Sprinternship™ information session.