As the first-ever intern with a Portland development experiment, there is no typical workday for Alyssa Carrizales, a student in the Lundquist College of Business.

Carrizales is an intern at Wieden+Kennedy's Portland Incubator Experiment, which serves the needs of seven tech startups. Selected from a pool of more than 440 applicants, the companies receive three months of mentoring from Wieden+Kennedy and its network, plus $20,000 in seed funding and nine months of free office space.

Earlier in the summer, Carrizales participated in "deep-dive" meetings in which the fledgling companies determined their target markets, set up business models and worked out how they wanted to take advantage of the branding opportunities available through the experiment’s partnership with Wieden+Kennedy.

As the startups matured, Carrizales's duties evolved. These days she's more likely to be found at a branding meeting or helping connect the companies with mentors from the experiment’s network of tech entrepreneurs.

"All these words that I learned as a business student, I'm seeing them applied in real life," said Carrizales, who double-majored in economics and business, with a concentration in marketing. "I think I got really lucky going down the Portland Incubator Experiment intern road because I'm getting to see businesses grown from the ground up."

As her time winds up, Carrizales feels well prepared for the future.

"This internship has opened a lot of doors, and I'm excited about what's next, whether it's with Wieden+Kennedy, an alum company of the Portland Incubator Experiment, or somewhere else entirely," she said.

- from the UO's Lundquist College of Business