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WWR Week 14

Hi everybody! Welcome to our final blog post recapping this amazing internship with Women Who Rock 🙁This was an experience that I will be forever grateful for as it has brought me not only a lot of experience and knowledge but also the opportunity to meet and work with some incredible people. Without further ado, let’s jump right in!

This week we had our end-of-year recap party with team WWR and the Event Committee. This took place at the Lipstyck Lab in Squirrel Hill. We got there about an hour before the event started to start setting up. We had a charcuterie board provided by The Cheese Queen, cookies, and some beverages. We also brought with us some 2023 Benefit Concert t-shirts in case somebody didn’t get one or just felt like snagging an extra. Once everybody started filing in and got some snacks we sat down and jumped right into the meeting portion of the night. We went over the concert and how the evening went by with little to no mishaps. Then we started talking about the Benefit Concert for next year (examples: Save the Date card designs, potential dates). I obviously can’t say anything about the show yet but I am very excited for this upcoming year, I can tell it’s going to be a good one! 

Once we finished going over business, we started up the festivities. That night we were mixing custom WWR lip glosses. We had different colors all with different rockstar coded names. You would go up to the counter and get to try on whichever color to find the one that spoke to you the most. I chose the plum color and got to add a flavoring to it - I picked vanilla. Once everybody got their lip gloss of choice, we took a big WWR family photo. This is when everyone started saying their goodbyes and parting ways. 

Again, this has been such an amazing experience. I am so thankful for my time with Women Who Rock and am so so excited to watch this amazing company continue to grow. Thank you for following my adventures. Stay rocking ⚡️🤘🏻🩷

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 13

No post this week - Thanksgiving break!

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WWR Week 12

Hello everybody! Welcome back to another week of my internship with WWR. Let’s dive right in. 

This was a fun day because we got to decorate the pop-up shop for the holidays! We set up the hot pink Christmas Tree, strung up all the string lights, and hung up some music-themed ornaments (different female musicians as well as some WWR ornaments). Next, we added some stick-on snowflake decals to the windows and doors of the pop-up shop. We filmed a very cute video of our decorating process, you should go check it out on the Women Who Rock Instagram. Then we counted and sorted some inventory by size as well as packed for an upcoming pop-up event. Finally, we discussed some details about our upcoming event on December 13th called SWIFTmas. This is obviously a celebration of all things Taylor Swift and will take place on her birthday! This event is going to be so much fun and tickets are selling out fast so you better hop on!

That’s all for this week folks, see you next time!

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 11

Hi everybody! Sadly there will be no weekly recap this week, I wasn't able to work this past week. See you next week :)

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 10

Why hello there everybody! Welcome back, today I will be recapping week 10 of my internship with Women Who Rock. Let’s dive right in!

This was a pretty short week but starting off on Wednesday, I did an online research project about the benefits of using phthalate-free, and soy wax candles. This was done in order to promote the brand-new WWR candle collection done in collaboration with The Haute Wick Social. We found information on the health benefits of using soy wax candles. This collection just recently launched and the candles smell absolutely amazing, I can’t wait to get my hands on them. This same day I did some research for an upcoming event we are doing at the pop-up shop on December 13th….SWIFTmas! It is Taylor Swift’s birthday and we are throwing a birthday/Christmas party for her. We researched some Swiftie-themed cookies as well as any sort of decoration and activity ideas. I found a disco ball ice bucket which would be perfect for this event. I am super excited to help plan this event and even more excited for it to happen!

Our last day this week was Friday, we were at the pop-up shop that day and we started off by unpacking some leftover boxes from the benefit that had some of the merchandise inside. Once we had it sorted and put with the rest of the items, we started packing for a pop-up the very next day. We grabbed at least 2 of each size for the clothing items we were bringing as well as some of the brand-new candles. Once we had all of the merchandise packed away, we presented our findings on Swiftmas. Lydia and I made a Pinterest board of different ideas so that we had a visual example of what we wanted for this event. 

That is all for this week, see you next time! ⚡

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 9

Hello everybody! Welcome back to week 9! This post is going to be quite short since I only had one day of my internship this past week. Let’s jump in!

My only internship meeting day was on Friday. I started the day off by looking for some research on the best website or program for photo sharing. This was so we could share all of our photobooth photos from the concert. We stumbled upon SmugMug which seemed to be the best option for what we are wanting to do. Next, we began unpacking all of the merchandise left over from the Benefit Concert. We sorted them by size and put them into their own designated boxes. We also sorted the leftover concert t-shirts and hung some up on a rack to go out on display in the front of the store. Another thing we did was change out the front table display in the store. We put out the new Women Who Rock candles along with some brand-new merchandise products such as a Champagne collection that consisted of tea towels, travel bags, and water bottles. Finally, we got all of our supplies packed for an event that was happening across the street at COHatch. Since it was so close to the pop-up shop we loaded up everything on a cart and pushed it across the street. We set up some of the new candles as well as our Halloween merchandise. Since it is the end of Spooky Season we made sure to decorate for it. We had a bedazzled skull that we filled with mini disco balls, as well as some fake glittery spiders to scatter around the table.

That is all for this (short but fun!) week, I hope you come back next week for more!! 😆

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 8: Concert Week

Hello everybody! Welcome to Week 8 of my WWR internship. Today I will be recapping the busiest week…the annual Women Who Rock Benefit Concert!

Starting on Wednesday, we had the final Event Committee meeting at Magee-Womens Research Institute. It was actually WWR founder, Melinda Colaizzi’s birthday so we surprised her with a card and cake! Since it was a surprise, Lydia (my fellow PPU intern) and I hid in the MWRI parking lot with the cake waiting for the green light signal to sneak back in. We definitely looked pretty sketchy for on-lookers but it was all worth it. This meeting consisted of the final details such as the run of show, a map of where everything would be, arrival times, and roles. 

On Thursday we went on a shopping spree to gather all of the supplies and items that were on the artist’s (Ann Wilson) rider. We had our list of required items and got to work, we went to Walmart and Giant Eagle Market District. It was actually a pretty smooth process with mostly everything being found in our first store. I’ve always wondered what kind of things an artist may ask for on their rider and getting the opportunity to buy the things on one was definitely interesting. There wasn’t anything out of this world on it, just very standard items. 

Friday was the big preparation day. We started off by rolling concert posters and putting them into plastic sleeves. Since the posters were of a thicker paper it was a pretty tedious process but we managed to get through them all without crinkling any edges. Next, we sorted some of the concert t-shirts into piles so that they could be evenly distributed to the 2 WWR merchandise tables in the venue. We also sorted the Survivor t-shirts into piles as well. Next, Lydia and I did another trial run set-up of the photo booth. We wanted to see how it would look with the additional pieces we ended up ordering the other week (spoiler alert, very cool). Finally, we labeled and taped all of the items that needed to go to Stage AE the following day. The biggest items were all of the things going into the VIP gift bags. We had to open every single box to see the item and what company they were from. Then we had to label it with “VIP GB” and the item name as well as the company. Finally, we had to tape them all back up again and put them at the front of the store for pick-up.

Lastly, SHOW DAY. I got there at around 11:00 AM for set up. The first thing I did was gather my credentials (All Access Pass). Our first actual task was velcrowing together the seat cushions onto the bar stools that would go around the VIP high-top tables. When they were all stuck together we set them up in groups of 4 around the tables. Next, we blew up 8 inflatable purple lips. This process took a little while because of how big the lips were. Once they were all inflated, we brought them over to the VIP lounge to scatter them around as decor. Then we moved downstairs to get our photobooth backdrop set up. We got the rack to hang the fabric backdrop set up and clipped all the shiny disco pieces together. Once we had about half the pieces together we zip-tied it to the rod that ran across the top. Then we finished off the rest of the pieces and clipped it all together. We had a little bit of sit-down time so we used it to get partly ready for the show. Once our hair and makeup were complete we joined the assembly line to fill up the hundreds of VIP bags. Since there were about 20 people working on the bags, it didn’t take too much of our time. After the bags were stuffed and set up on the table outside, we got dressed and started counting down the minutes till the show. 

VIP doors opened at 6:15, we stood at the gift bags ready to hand them to the VIP ticketholders whenever they walked by. I was on content duty that night, so my main job was to share any Instagram stories we got tagged in. About every 10 minutes I would check my phone for any notifications and get to sharing. I also got some cool content of the 2 new Volkswagon Cars that were parked out front of Stage AE (VW was a big sponsor this year!). Once the show kicked off, I also ran around asking the vendors if they needed anything (such as water or snacks). Ann Wilson took the stage later in the night and absolutely CRUSHED IT. I took a seat on one of the bleachers on the balcony and continued sharing social media content while still enjoying the show. 

Once the show was over it was tear-down time. We cut all the zip-ties and took apart the photobooth backdrop. Since we had been practicing building and taking it down, we were able to get this done super fast. The final thing we did was deflate the plastic lips we filled earlier in the day. Funnily enough, this actually took the longest out of anything! At one point Lydia and I both had to sit on one of the lips in order to get the air out faster. We ended the night at around midnight, it was a long tiresome day but the turnout was absolutely amazing! I am so so grateful to have been a part of this amazing event. ⚡🩷🤘

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 7

Hello everybody! Welcome back to week 7 of my Women Who Rock internship. As of today, we are officially 5 days away from the benefit concert! Let’s dive right into this past week's recap.

Starting off on Wednesday this week, we had the WWR Event Committee Meeting at Stage AE. At the meeting, we did a venue walk-through to learn where all of the different vendor tables, photo booth, and check-in tables would be. We were given printed-out maps of the layout fo the venue for where every single thing would be located. There were also arrival times and day-of-show roles discussed for the committee members.

There was no Thursday meeting today so we will skip to Friday! We spent the first hour and a half painting our donated pumpkins pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. At first, the process was looking a bit scary when we started painting. The paint was turning out to be streaky and not as bright as we expected. But thankfully once we got to about the second layer of paint they started to turn out nice and bright like we intended. We ended up giving each pumpkin about three coats of paint just to make them bright and even. After painting the first couple of layers we left them to dry in the back of the pop-up. During that time I learned how to put together the sparkly disco backdrop for the photobooth. When first looking at it in the packaging it looked quite complex and intimidating, but once we started rolling it actually turned out to be quite easy. However it was a lot smaller than the photo made it seem and the dimensions listed were actually wrong, so we ended up ordering another pack in order to make it bigger and have more of a WOW factor. I also figured out how to set up the backdrop stand and how we would be hanging up said backdrop. I am super excited to see how it turns out on the day of the concert 🙂 On this day we also got the concert t-shirts for this year, so once I was finished with the photo booth and did one more coat on the pumpkins (check out the official WWR TikTok account to see the painting process from start to finish!) I began filming some content to show off the shirts as well as changing the outfit on one of the mannequins to really show off the t-shirt. 

This weekend was supposed to be our PinkOut event at Southside Works but sadly had to postpone Saturday due to poor weather… but Sunday was still on! When I first arrived, we grabbed all of the equipment and merchandise to set up our pop-up table outside in the Town Square area. Lydia (the other PPU intern, she rocks 🤘) and I were the ones at the table for this day, it was a pretty cold and drizzly day to be outside for hours but we made it really fun! We grabbed a blanket to warm up at the table and got to work. We had some of our hand-painted pink pumpkins for sale this day, for $15 and all proceeds go to Magee-Womens Research Institute to Support Breast Cancer Research. For the weather we had, there weren’t that many people who stopped by but we still made quite a few sales including selling 6 pink pumpkins! In fact, two people went on a journey to find cash in order to purchase one 😂 We had DJ Hunny as the live entertainment and the sun just so happened to come out as their set started! We were having a fun time dancing around in our chairs. When the event was over, we packed everything up including our leftover pink pumpkins, and put it all back in the store. 

That is all for this week, tune in next time for a recap of our WWR BENEFIT CONCERT WEEK!! ⚡🩷🎤

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 6

Welcome back to another weekly blog post. The annual Women Who Rock Benefit Concert is officially 11 DAYS away!!! It is creeping up on us very quickly, if you have not bought your tickets yet…what are you doing? This event is going to be so much fun! However today, I will be recapping week 6 of my WWR internship. Let’s dive right in.

On Thursday we discussed our Pinktober event happening at Southside Works on October 14th and 15th. This event is going to be a lot of fun, there will be multiple female musicians performing on Saturday and then a DJ on Sunday! We learned that there were 50 pumpkins that were donated by Bedner’s Farm & Greenhouse. We will be hand-painting these pumpkins hot pink this coming Friday which will be very exciting. Another thing we did was look at two concept brand videos and pick one that would be played on the big screen behind the stage during the concert. It was definitely a difficult pick since both of them were so cool. We also discussed different roles for the day of the concert and what we would be doing. Specifically for me, I will most likely be working the photo booth and capturing some content from the night. Later that night we had a Zoom call with all of the volunteers for the concert. We went around and introduced ourselves and what roles we would prefer to have for the night.

Friday we had a pop-up in the lobby of Magee-Womens Hospital. So we got there at around 8:30 to set everything up. We unpacked and set up all of our inventory for the day. A good amount of people stopped by and bought a few of our merch pieces such as the WWR baby onesies and some of our cool earrings. This was a great experience for some customer interaction as well as getting to learn more about the Shopify POS system that is used at the pop-up shops. The pop-up was open until about 4:00 but I unfortunately had to leave a little early for a club meeting back on campus. It was so nice getting to meet women and hear some of their stories as well as introduce some people to Women Who Rock who did not know what it was prior to the day.

That is all for this week folks, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you come back next week for another week of fun!

[gracethomas04]

Rising Star Finalist Event

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WWR Week 5

Hi everybody, welcome or welcome back to week 5 of my internship with Women Who Rock! It is officially the month of the WWR Benefit Concert. The countdown as of today is 18 DAYS!!

Starting with Thursday, we have a set day for the Pink Out in Southside Works. It will be on October 14th and 15th! There will be four female artists performing on that Saturday and a DJ for Sunday. Sadly, nobody has come forward as a sponsor for our Pink Pumpkin Patch but hopefully, we are able to find somebody who is willing to provide about 100 pumpkins. We chatted about fundraising a little bit and learned what unrestricted dollars are. An example is if we gave Magee-Womens Hospital $1,000 they are able to use that money however they see fit. Another thing we talked about is who is providing the food for the Benefit Concert and what needs to be on the list. GetGo is providing breakfast and lunch this year. They have supplied the food for the crew in the past. For dinner, Square Cafe will be providing the food. I recently had brunch here and thoroughly enjoyed it. We also looked at a couple things that needed to be approved such as, the design for the concert t-shirt as well as the wrap design for the WWR van. After approving the van wrap, we began coming up ideas for content once the van is all finished. We were thinking about doing is a contest to come up with a name and a couple TikTok ideas for a fun reveal.

On Friday we began packing for the Rising Star Finalist event. We brought along the stuff needed for a pop-up. I was also given access to the official WWR Twitter. I am able to retweet any important information or tweet about new music releases every Friday. Moving on to the Rising Star Finalist event, this took place at Sing! Sing! Sing! In Wexford, PA. At this event the four finalists performed and one was chosen as the finalist. My parents were actually in town so my mom got to join me and attend this fun event! I helped with setting up the seating for the event as well as the pop up shop in the lobby. Once the event kicked off I ran around filming content. This was such a fun event to work and attend at, my mom also really enjoyed it which is another plus 🙂I will make another post including some of the photos I took from this night.

That’s all for this week folks, thanks for reading!

[gracethomas04]

Yelp Elite Event

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WWR Week 4

Hello everyone! Welcome back to week 4 of my internship with Women Who Rock. Let’s dive right into this past week. First up is Thursday, this actually marked one month away from the Benefit Concert which is super exciting! I cannot wait for it to get here, I know it will be a great time and of course for an AMAZING cause. We went over some information for the upcoming show, such as how many volunteers would be there (specifically from Point Park University) and a couple of the big-time sponsors like Gibson Guitars. I also got to learn what a 501c3 is, this is the official stamp for a registered nonprofit. Another thing we did was research information on what supplies we could use for our pink pumpkin patch so we went to town on Amazon and put any links to what we found on a shared document. I got to write a testimonial statement on this internship for a news article on WWR and the Benefit Concert. We got to sit in on a Zoom call with “SponsorUnited” which is a website that is used to track marketing and partnership information for all sorts of different companies. It was so fascinating to watch, there were so many features to go through. I could just scroll through there for hours and not get bored. After our meeting on campus, we went back to the pop-up shop for the Yelp Elite Event. This event was really fun to be at, there were multiple female-owned vendors set up along with live music from a female artist. We got to walk around and mingle but after everyone had been there for a little bit, we grabbed a microphone and walked around to some of the vendors and guests to interview them for a TikTok. Some of the questions we asked were “What do you love about being a part of the Yelp Elite Squad?” and “What do you love about being a female-owned business?”. I took a couple of photos, so keep an eye out for a post dedicated to them!

On Friday we started the day off by sorting inventory by size and then counting them to add to a spreadsheet. With all of our heads together we were finished sorting and counting in under 15 minutes. Next, we started getting lanyards together for the Benefit Concert we put all the clear card holders onto the lanyards. Since there were so many lanyards this took a decent amount of time but we still managed to make it fun! We all talked about the October pop-up at Magee-Womens Hospital and what time we had to be there for set up. Since this is a bright and early call time we decided to have breakfast all together too. Lastly, on Friday we got to look at some t-shirt designs and decide which of the bunch were our favorites. We also tossed around a couple of ideas on what the phrase on the front could be changed to. 

That was all for this week folks, I hope you enjoyed it and come back next week to learn about my upcoming adventures! 🤘⚡🎤

[gracethomas04]

Here are some photos from the WWR Pop-up Shop at the Terminal this past weekend! ⚡️🤘🏻

[gracethomas04]

WWR Week 3

It’s me, hi! Welcome back to week 3 of my Women Who Rock internship. Exciting things are happening as we count down the days until the annual benefit concert - 32 days to be exact. Let’s begin with Thursday, we went over the “script” that will go to any Pittsburgh-based influencers who will be attending the concert. The overall summary of it was an overview of what the company is, who is performing at the benefit, and why it is being put on. The influencers will make a post prior to the event date, along with content throughout the night of the concert. Next up, we went back to our Pink Pumpkin Patch idea and continued discussing the rough details of it such as when it is happening, where are we getting the pumpkins, and . who is going to paint them pink. Moving on from the pumpkin patch, we were given a mini project to do, which was to come up with new ideas for some buttons. I decided to make a Pinterest board to share with everyone. On the board, I added any sort of ideas - such as what’s trending right now, and overall vibes. We ended up with two really awesome ideas, I won’t say exactly what they are since we are still in the developing stages so you’ll just have to take my word on it 🙂. Finally, on Thursday, we sat in on another weekly call with the Magee-Womens Marketing team. A couple of things discussed were about inventory, and how many VIP tickets are available.

On Friday we started by going over the map of where everything will be set up at Stage AE on the day of the show. We also got to package up the bought VIP tickets into envelopes to give to sponsors, businesses, and more. Next, we helped unpack the van from an event the previous day as well as repacking merchandise for a pop-up. Finally, on Friday, we got to pick out a piece of merchandise from the store to take home. This is because we came up with an idea for the TikTok, we are going to do an OOTD (outfit of the day). So next Friday, everyone is going to be wearing a different piece of WWR merch styled however we want. 

Surprise we have another day to recap! On Saturday, I got to work the WWR Pop-up Shop at the Strip District Terminal (I took some pictures that I will add in 🙂). As soon as I got there, I helped set up/decorate the table and hang up the merchandise. When the event started rocking I learned how to use Shopify to check out customers which was actually quite easy and straightforward once we got the credit card scanner working. It was a gorgeous hot day out in Pittsburgh, which made this event so nice to be at. Some other people working at the event were Point Park SAEM alums, and I got to talk and network with people in my field. 

That is all for this week folks, I hope you enjoyed hearing me ramble. See you again next week for more exciting adventures!

[gracethomas04]

WWR Internship Week 2

Hi everyone, welcome back to Week 2 of my internship with Women Who Rock! This week was a lot of fun and I am excited to tell you all about it.

Kicking it off with Thursday 09/07/23, we started off by learning was a Pitch Deck was and looking at all the previous decks that Women Who Rock has done. In case anyone does not know what a deck is, it is basically a short presentation on what your business or “pitch” is. They can be used to try and get investors to make deals with your company. Next, we presented our brand research on what different companies have done in the past for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I was actually a little bit nervous to present my findings because a majority of the things I found were from 2015, but Melinda was quite impressed with all of our findings. We were also told that the Marketing Coordinator of WWR said that all of the intern's work was some of the best brand research they had ever seen. We went through the “Pinktober” Pinterest board and looked at all the pins, We also tossed around the idea of a Pink Pumpkin Patch during the month of October. This would be for Breast Cancer Awareness and also promotion for the Benefit concert. We found a lot of really cute pink pumpkin inspiration along with some decked out for Breast Cancer Awareness. The last thing we did on Thursday was sit in on a weekly call with the Magee-Womens Hospital Marketing team. This was to talk about past events from the prior week along with upcoming events and things needed for them.

Finally, Friday was a really fun day. We all sat around and picked the Rising Star Contest Winners! We went through so many submissions and got to hear all sorts of different talent. The most difficult part of the process was trying to decide the final three. I think we were debating on who to pick for almost an hour, there are all sorts of aspects to look at when picking between talented individuals. After the journey of listening, note-taking, and discussion, we finally came to a decision. It was a tie! Instead of three finalists, we decided on four Rising Star contestants. I never realized how much of a thought process goes into something like this. Even though it was a tough process, I am so grateful to have been a part of the decision!

That’s all this week, see you again next time!!

[gracethomas04]

WWR Internship Week 1

A little background on what Women Who Rock is, they are an company that is female-founded and fronted which is absolutely AMAZING in all aspects. Their goal is to raise awareness of Women’s Health. They do this through music which is something that almost anyone can connect to. For anyone who wants to read and learn more about this company, I will link their website at the end of this post. 

Now let's talk about my first week of this internship. Our meeting days are every Thursday and Friday and alongside me, there are two other interns. We started with introductions - Hometown, major, and what we wanted to learn/get out of this internship. My answer was that since I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want to do in the future, I want to kind of dip my toes into different aspects and fields. With this specific internship, I get to learn about how producing and what goes into creating a live show. This is being done by getting to see all the behind the scenes of the annual benefit concert on October 21st, 2023. Next, we got our weekly projects. For this week, we are supposed to research what some other brands are and have done in the past for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The other part of the project is to make a Pinterest Board as to what “Pinktober” is in our minds. Finally, we got “Hot Cards” to promote the benefit concert and our task was to put them around Campus. I went around my apartment building and slipped them under everyones doors. 

On Friday, we created and went over the “Run of Show” for the benefit concert. This is where you go through and set times to everything that is supposed to be happening on stage. Afterwards we wrote up a list and started sorting and packing inventory for the pop-up that was going on at the Race on Sunday. While it may seem like not that much was going on for this day, it’s because the Run of Show took the longest to get done due to the amount of planning and timing that has to go into it. Fridays are also our shortest day only lasting from 1:00 - 3:00 pm. 

That is all for this week, if you enjoyed what you read please come back next time to learn about what I do this coming week!

Link to the WWR website!