Guest Post by 2018 BCPP Marketing & Communications Intern Maria Gramajo

My name is Maria and I am a third-year student at American University in Washington, D.C. I am pursuing a BA in American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies as well as a minor in Sustainability. My specific focus is the intersection of what it means to be Latinx in the U.S., health, gender, and environment in the NGO sector. I decided to intern to study how these issues work together outside of the classroom to gain more knowledge on each of these topics. Not a lot of well-known NGO’s look at their work as intersectional, so I thought I would simply need to do multiple internships to cover my study focus.

Then I saw Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP) in an email with Bay Area summer internship opportunities. It’s an organization that works at the intersection of women’s health, environmental health, and marginalized communities’ health disparities. I realized this was the place I needed to be. I applied to be a Communications and Marketing Intern, as I thought I would be able to learn and also work to pull resources and content together for people like me, who may not understand the science behind breast cancer and what increases our cancer risk.

This internship, although short, left me prepared to go back to D.C. to work toward eliminating health disparities for communities that marginalized communities face and are often blamed for. This internship allowed me to understand how lucky I am to come from the Bay Area and go to school in a city like D.C.

I also became more aware of the products I choose when shopping at the store, and I have slowly been able to rid myself of products full of harmful chemicals. Interning at BCPP made me aware of the fact that there are businesses trying to be socially and environmentally conscious, some of my favorites being Juice Beauty and Klean Kanteen.

At BCPP, I was able to gain a better sense of what I hope to do post-graduation as well as the work that I find meaningful. I am beyond happy to have spent my summer here and have learned so much from everyone. I am especially grateful for everything that my supervisor, Erika, did to ensure I learned as much as I could while here.