Joy Song, CCT ’25

BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE MISSION OF THE ORGANIZATION AND WHAT YOUR ROLE WAS.

Joy interned at the agriculture  tech company RiceTec, where she worked as the Corporate Communications Intern which built on previous PR experience she garnered during her undergraduate career. RiceTec is a pioneer company, known for introducing hybrid rice to the U.S. market 25 years ago, while offering high yield seeds and advancing agricultural research. In her role, Joy worked with content creation for both the global and US RiceTec social media accounts, helped with strategic management planning such as researching stakeholder engagement and creating stakeholder maps, conducting demographic research, organizing their global media database to help ease internal communications and helped navigate future communications tactics. Joy helped with both external and internal pursuits, also lending a hand with planning for events such as their upcoming 25th anniversary for hybrid rice, creating relevant content such as employee stories to help promote the event and target future potential recruits. Given the variety of her job responsibilities and the new industry she’s working in, filled with terminology and concepts to master, Joy feels that “Every day for me is a learning day.”

HOW DID YOUR CCT STUDIES INFORM YOUR EXPERIENCE OF THIS INTERNSHIP?

According to Joy, the first thing that came to mind was the analytical research skills she formed in one of our two required courses, CCTP-5005. She says that these skills have been essential in her success in aspects of the job such as stakeholder management. In her words, “we spend a lot of time in this program doing research. The skills that I’ve built here have helped me formulate comprehensive research strategies that have really helped me in this position.”

She also mentioned that the communications skills she’s honed has been instrumental in helping her develop relationships with different internal teams and industry stakeholders and understanding the relationships between teams in her organization with external institutions like environmental and governmental agencies.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE INTERNSHIP WILL INFORM YOUR CCT STUDENT EXPERIENCE?

Joy is currently the only Corporate Communications Intern at RiceTec, which she feels has made her very proactive in making the most of her experiences. If she needs help navigating onboarding, connecting with different departments, or asking for help– she has to take that into her own hands. She feels that this will really help her in both her CCT and professional pursuits and says that because of this internship, she feels “more comfortable getting involved with the great resources that CCT offers like alumni events because I’ve learned the importance of being proactive. I feel more comfortable setting proactive goals to get myself engaged in the program and the opportunities it offers.”

HOW DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT THIS INTERNSHIP?

Joy found the internship on LinkedIn and knew she wanted to apply as Corporate Communications is a role she wants to pursue professionally post-grad. Since she is an international student, she applied for Curricular Practical Training work authorization and enrolled in an internship course. She says that Dr. Turner and the rest of the CCT staff were incredibly supportive, hosting webinars so that students knew exactly what documentation they needed and how to navigate the process.