Internship Program

Narrator: My name is Mickenzie, and I am representing the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Currently, I'm a rising senior at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville studying economics. In the Eighth District here, we oversee several amazing programs and initiatives. Here's a few fun facts for you. Our Research department hosts FRED, a trusted source of economic data that is accessed by more than 2 million people every year.

Additionally, our Treasury Division provides analytic support for a program called Do Not Pay, which prevents improper payments by the U.S. government. Both of these programs, along with many more, make the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis unique and filled with opportunities for young professionals, including myself.

Currently, I work as an intern in our Research division. However, I first encountered the St. Louis Fed over three years ago. Here's a quick story for you. At the time, I had just finished my freshman year of college and decided that I wanted to be an economics major. I was scrolling through LinkedIn -- build your network -- when I saw a post about the St. Louis Fed's human Pride flag, an annual event that is put on by our Central Pride Employee Resource Group. Central Pride supports LGBTQ+ employees and their allies here at the St. Louis Fed.

I remember running over to my mom and eagerly showing her the post. At the time, I'd never heard of a corporation or a company that held events like a human Pride flag. That day, I told my mom that I was going to work at the St. Louis Fed someday because I wanted to be part of an organization with that kind of culture. The next summer, I was working in Community Development at the St. Louis Fed and absolutely loving it.

Now, wrapping up my second summer here, I can happily say that our culture and work environment has exceeded my expectations. Beyond diversity and the Bank's fabulous employee resource groups, I love how collaborative and friendly the environment is. I've gotten to make so many great friends throughout the intern cohort, and I've never had somebody turn me down for a coffee chat or to ask questions to help me expand my network.

Working for the Bank also gives me a sense that I'm working for something bigger than myself, and that what I'm doing matters. While all this sounds great, some might also ask what my day-to-day role looks like. Currently, I work as a Research intern. About 25% of the time, I assist with Research publications, get to attend a variety of intern events, and I assemble a monthly Research newsletter. The rest of the time, I'm lucky enough to work with one of our economists here.

I get the chance to help clean data, learn more about our data sets and generate graphs to help understand underlying trends within our data. Through this process, I've been able to strengthen my skills coding in Stata and R, and now we're about to start writing a blog post to be published on the St. Louis Fed's website. This summer, throughout all of these different projects, I've also really grown as an independent thinker.

I've been able to come up to my economist and give her ideas, where I see that we could improve, or I'm able to go to different events throughout the internship to pursue my passion projects. For example, I was just able to publish a FRED Blog post, which was also a great opportunity.

Throughout my college experience, I've had several experiences that have helped prepare me for my role here at the Fed. At my school, I took an economics course that was an independent study with one of my professors. I've also had the chance to take two statistics courses, which have proven quite helpful. And of course, any background and knowledge from all of my economics courses has been very relevant for the work I'm doing.

I would recommend math, stats and economics courses to any student who is interested in an internship in Research at the Fed. However, the St. Louis Fed hires so much more than economics majors like myself. In our cohort, there are interns with majors in computer science, finance, graphic design, journalism, and so much more. So if you're interested in working at the St. Louis Fed, regardless of your major or role, I would recommend taking advantage of experiences on your campus that can help you build out your soft skills.

We spend lots of time working in teams at the Bank. My advice for future interns would be to practice your people skills. Work on group projects or get involved as a leader on your campus, because that can help prepare you for your future success. I would also recommend that those interested build out their network. And whenever you're talking, show the passion for whatever it is that you love doing. Personally, I have loved the work experience that I've gained here, as well as the collaborative and inclusive company culture at the St. Louis Fed.