Business Development Internship - Denver Economic Development & Opportunity (DEDO)
The Denver Economic Development & Opportunity (DEDO) office is seeking a Business Development Intern to join the team. The majority of the intern’s time will be spent: collaborating on long-term strategy and project development; designing collateral and messaging to deploy as the division prioritizes business community engagement in 2021; and, data aggregation, cleaning, and entry about Denver’s business community. This position is ideal for an intern seeking a career in public administration, economic development, or community development. The candidate will develop and hone their skills at stakeholder identification and outreach, communications, program design, implementation, and evaluation.
The candidate will gain insight into how supporting Denver’s businesses of all sizes across industries advances the City’s economic development pillars. This is a part-time opportunity, we anticipate this position starting in June 2021 and ending early December 2021. This timeline is tentative and flexible, but we are seeking a commitment of approximately six months. Business hours for DEDO are Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:00pm, and we hope the candidate will be able to devote approximately 20 hours a week. These hours are negotiable depending on the selected student’s school schedule and/or need.
DEDO is dedicated to advancing economic prosperity for the City of Denver, its businesses, neighborhoods and residents. Our work supports the agency’s mission to ensure our residents, businesses, and neighborhoods benefit from a vibrant economy. We believe everyone should have the opportunity to make a home, get a job, and build a future. Our purposeful and intentional approach to economic development is designed to broaden the tax base, stimulate balanced growth, increase the availability and affordability of housing, revitalize neighborhoods, and develop a skilled workforce for our region's employers. Working with a wide variety of community partners, we work to build and sustain an economic culture that reflects values of innovation, sustainability, and economic mobility for all.
This position will be reporting to the team’s Business Attraction & Expansion Lead staff and the candidate will occasionally be responsible for completing projects for DEDO’s leadership.
As an intern, you will have the opportunity to experience and support the Business Development and Global Business Development teams in:
- Becoming an expert in DEDO’s branding and marketing guidelines, and producing collateral (including case studies, slide decks, one-pagers) for different Business Development and Global Business Development programs and presentations based on approved design principles; lead Business Development and Global Business Development’s social media strategy (MARKETING)
- Collaborating with the Business Development staff responsible for formulating and carrying out a business retention survey (experience in statistics or data science is welcome to support this effort); (OPERATIONS AND STRATEGY)
- Assisting in scheduling and participating in business retention calls; work alongside the Business Development team to utilize information gained from calls with local businesses to inform programs, policies, and outreach efforts; (OPERATIONS AND STRATEGY)
- Monitoring City and private sector information sources to stay apprised of upcoming projects that may impact businesses, key industries, and/or the overall economy of Denver. This may require briefing business development staff on current and upcoming policies of the City Council; it may also include the creation and distribution of an internal newsletter every two weeks; (OPERATIONS AND STRATEGY)
- Assisting the Business Development and Global Business Development teams with the continued rollout of Salesforce to better enable communication between DEDO and Denver’s business community; (OPERATIONS)
- Monitoring and tracking news alerts of local business closures, especially for small businesses, and update/maintain the Business Development team’s COVID-closure tracking spreadsheet with this information (OPERATIONS)
- Other special projects: Global Landing Pad; helping with logistics and coordination of ACE Conference (August 1-2); creation of 3-4 DEDO case studies; data collection and analysis for standalone projects (PROJECT MANAGEMENT)
- Other duties as assigned
To be considered for this internship, please upload a detailed cover letter and resume to your application.
Our ideal candidate will have/be:
- Pursuing a degree in Business Administration, Public Administration, Urban Planning, Communications, or a related field
- Excellent writing, research, and analytical skills
- Firm understanding of data analytics and/or statistical analysis would be beneficial
- Experience with Salesforce or other CRM applications
- Excellent interpersonal skills, and capacity to communicate effectively via telephone, email, and other means of correspondence
- Eager and willing to collaborate with both the Business Development and Global Business Development division on tasks and projects as assigned
- Intermediate computer skills with Microsoft Office suite, especially Excel
- Culturally sensitive/sensitive and values diversity
- Expresses curiosity about the agency, other employees’ work, and overall policies guiding economic development
- Experience providing excellent customer service
- Capacity to take initiative
We realize your time is valuable so please do not apply if you do not have at least the following required minimum qualifications:
- Education: Current enrollment in an accredited college program leading to a certificate, licensure, associates, bachelor’s, or higher degree in, or a recent graduate (completed specified program within 1 year of completion).
- Experience: None
- Education & Experience Equivalency: No substitution of experience for education is permitted.
- Licensure & Certification: None