EDITOR'S NOTE: This week's Indiana Cyber Hub blog is the first in a two-part series in celebration of National Intern Day and Indiana Intern Day. Part Two of the series will be posted on Friday, July 26th. 

Whether your career path is to focus on a career as a public relations strategist, or to work on building bridges as a field engineer, the value of gaining real world experience – as part of an internship or a co-op – is immeasurable.

After all, there are few experiences – aside from taking the classes required for your major, or the certifications that are necessary for a career in cybersecurity – that’ll provide you with the opportunity to perform work that is not only meaningful, but, more than that, one where you can benefit by being challenged with the responsibilities and assignments that you’re given – on a daily basis – by an employer; experiences that can help positively influence the decisions you’ll make about what it is you really want to do with your career that’s both rewarding and fun!

With that in mind, today, we celebrate National Intern Day and Indiana Intern Day; a “day”, both across the country and throughout the Hoosier State, for companies and organizations to honor and celebrate the hard work and effort of the people, who are dedicating their summer or a part of their school year to participate in an internship or co-op.

As someone who believes strongly in the value of mentoring, we want to be able to provide someone with a challenge, because as we like to say, once you start working, you’re no longer an intern, you are a part of our team.

That’s certainly true, as this summer, our team has had the pleasure of working with Lilly Stroud (pictured on the right), who is preparing for her senior year at the University of Cincinnati and getting ready to launch her career in public relations.

As our Communications Specialist, she has had the opportunity to play a lead role in working on everything from writing blogs and managing our social media marketing program on X, LinkedIn and Facebook, to helping us update our Indiana Cyber Hub website (and so much more).

In celebration of her work, as part of a two-part blog series, we sat down with Libby and asked her five questions reflecting on the time she’s spent with us and what she’s gained through her experiences in cybersecurity, PR and communications, and working as a part of state government.

In part one of our series, Libby discusses her interest in cybersecurity and shares what led to her decision to apply for the internship with the State of Indiana.

What is it about cybersecurity that interests you as part of your education and as something you might pursue as a career?

Cybersecurity interests me because it is an all-encompassing field that affects our daily lives in both good and bad ways. There are so many facets to cybersecurity that make it exciting to learn more about, and there are constantly new developments in the cyber world from cyber scams to data breaches - it’s always exciting! As far as a future career, I would be interested in pursuing a position doing PR in the cybersecurity space whether that be for a PR firm or in-house for an agency that deals with cybersecurity. Our world is ruled by cyber and when something goes wrong there are widespread consequences. The crises that are faced when an organization is facing a cybersecurity issue would be fun and challenging to handle as a PR professional!

Libby, you are studying public relations at the University of Cincinnati. What is it about working on the Indiana cybersecurity program that led to you applying to be an intern?

I applied to work on the Indiana cybersecurity program because it would allow me to get experience doing PR and communications in a field that I didn’t know much about. It would get me used to communicating about things that I’m not very educated on and that I would have to learn about over the course of the internship. I knew that by participating in this internship I would be introduced to two new career fields, cybersecurity and the public sector. I thought that it would be interesting to get more insight into what a job working for the state government looked like! I heard such great things about the work culture that comes with working in the public sector, and that was a major factor in me applying. It was important to me to not only gain experience, but to also work with someone who could serve as a mentor. I wanted to work closely with my supervisor to gain the critical knowledge I’d need to take with me into my career. The overview of the internship led me to believe that by being an intern, I would be able to network with impressive people in both the PR and cyber field and that I would learn more in this position than I have in any other internship that I’ve participated in before. And, let me just say, that couldn’t have been more true!

Be sure to come back and visit our blog page on Friday, July 26^th, as we finish up our conversation – in celebration of National Intern Day and Indiana Intern Day – with Libby Stroud, as she talks about what she’s learned about cyber, her perspective as someone who’s “grown up” with technology and the Internet, and some insights into what she discovered what was most interesting about her experiences in working in cyber in the Hoosier state.