This past summer, San Diego State business marketing senior Allison Coli finished her first marketing internship in Silicon Valley.
Coli interned for Netskope, a startup tech company that specializes in cloud security, which protects data that is software- or services-based in the Internet rather than on a computer device.
Coli worked with the marketing team.
Her main project during her internship was to find a sales enablement platform, which is a content management system that lets sales representatives easily access needed information.
“We narrowed it down to three choices for sales enablement platforms, and then we brought on the sales representatives and vice presidents to sit in on those demos, and they narrowed it down to one,” Coli said.
She was part of the first round of interns the company ever took on.
“They had just closed some big accounts, so I came on at a really good time,” Coli said. “The energy was super exciting and I learned so much.”
Coli’s father first exposed her to marketing during high school.
Her father set up interviews for Coli with his colleagues in marketing and she found brand marketing appealed to her the most of any possible career field.
“It seemed interesting because I have a creative side and a more organized side, so it was a combination of the two,” she said.
When Coli first got to SDSU, she didn’t know if she liked the marketing major.
But after she took her first upper-division marketing class during the first semester of her junior year, that all changed and she became excited about her major.
In addition to her studies and her internship at Netskope, Coli has become involved in other ways, such as maintaining a spot in the Weber Honors College and being a member of Alpha Gamma Delta sorority.
She has also studied abroad three times, which she said was influential in building her career goals.
She studied abroad in Rome in December 2013, Beijing in June 2014 and Spain in December 2014.
Director of Lavin Center Programs Bernhard Schroeder taught Coli during her time in Rome.
“Studying entrepreneurship in Rome during winter break helped to get Allison out of her comfort zone and to embrace the idea that small business creation is a natural option when considering a career,” Schroeder said.
Coli said although finding an internship was a long and painful process, it has played a big role in her career trajectory.
“I applied to over 100 places,” she said. “It’s super tiring, frustrating, and draining applying for internships and getting rejected, but it’s so worth it in the end.”
After she graduates from SDSU this spring, Coli looks to work at a tech startup in Silicon Valley near her hometown.
