During her summer internship at Amazon, Samantha Gayle, CAS/BS ’26, developed a workplace health and safety campaign that is now being implemented. Seeing her ideas move into practice was one part of the experience. Just as valuable were the lessons she took away about leadership, speaking up, and the work she wants to pursue after graduation.

A senior studying Public Health and graduating this December, Gayle has used her time at AU to explore different possibilities and learn more about the kind of work that motivates her. This summer, that exploration continued through an internship in Workplace Health and Safety at Amazon.

At Amazon, Gayle developed a safety campaign for the warehouse, contributing to ongoing workplace safety efforts. The project gave her an opportunity to take an active role in the work and see an initiative she developed move toward implementation.

I was able to fill in a lot of weak areas in the office and also along Amazon itself, so I'm really happy about that internship.

For Gayle, however, the value of the experience went beyond the project itself. Much of her growth came from working closely with her supervisor, whose own career experience provided a model for the kind of leader Gayle hopes to become.

Her supervisor had previously worked as a safety manager at Google before joining Amazon. Observing her leadership style gave Gayle a firsthand look at how effective managers communicate, delegate, and support their teams.

A lot of check-ins, a lot of delegation of tasks. So, I learned from her how to be a better leader.

The experience also pushed Gayle to become more confident in advocating for herself. She learned to ask more questions, pursue opportunities and take a more active role in shaping her experience.

I know now how to be a better leader, to ask for more things, how to ask more questions, how to pursue, and just how to be more assertive.

That growing confidence helped Gayle think more clearly about what comes next. Her internship gave her experience in one area of public health while helping her identify other interests she wants to explore. She is now interested in mental health and disease-related work, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention among the organizations she hopes to pursue in the future.

In that way, the internship gave her something just as important as professional experience: clarity.

I kind of did help me find my path.

As she prepares to graduate from AU, Gayle is taking those lessons with her. Her experience illustrates how an internship can support career readiness through both practical work and personal discovery. Developing a project mattered. So did learning how to ask questions, work with a supervisor, and recognize new interests.

Her advice to other students is to remain open to experiences, even when they are unsure where those experiences will lead.