Marketing and Communications Internship with the Center of Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics May 2026The Intern Presentation
As the Senior Intern at the COE, it was an honor and pleasure to craft this presentation with new recruits: Sierra, Matthew, and Christy.
The aim of this presentation was to report & update ASRC Director Chris Thorncroft in simple terms the activities and ventures undertaken by the COE under our supervisor (Director of Operations at the Center of Excellence in Weather and Climate Analytics). To measure the impact of this presentation, please consider that the previous presentation to him was over a year ago and before my employment began.
There was clear intent setting up the Table of Contents. “Lets provide a clear overview without doing too much, or missing any critical elements of our work”
I really enjoyed being the senior intern, I got to pass on some responsibilities training the new interns AND I had the opportunity to focus on what I loved/ preferred to do. Passing on the mantle was not only satisfying, but incredibly rewarding.
Of course, we still got to work together. The larger events were a team effort.
Most recently, we our very first webinar where we enlisted the help of Fuzehub. It was amazing, we had a 95% attendance to registration rate. Fuzehub applauded us! Much of our efforts used very direct language to connect to our Webinar such as “Register Now”. Our methods included:
LinkedIn series of posts to promote registration. Including a Kickoff, Introduction, Speaker Highlights x2 (Boosted), Industry Advisory Board Meeting recap, Times Union Recognition, & Bruce Bailey’s (Energy Industry Expert & Leader in ETEC) interview.
ConstantContact series of newsletters to targeted lists where we slowly teased our webinar and introduced information bit-by-bit to keep our content fresh. Including an Introduction, Why you need to be there, Why registration is Essential, Final Call, Last Chance, and Join Now!
Additionally, we grew our recipient lists throughout our campaign. With ConstantContact, we had over 200 Airtable additions and maintained consistent open rates with our audience. We boosted posts on LinkedIn to promote our Webinar Speakers - Kyle Bentley from National Grid & Adam Helman from AvanGrid. This gained us well over 11k impressions. Post Webinar, we also performed a series of analytics to track and measure growth using metrics like Registrants Gained, Impressions, Opens, Clicks, & Engagement Rates. We made critiques on each communications sent out after testing its effectiveness where I then gave recommendations and recognition for each individual post & email blast in hopes of having improved reactions for future webinar efforts.
In ETEC (Our HQ), we also had our 3rd Annual Renewable Energy Conference and hosted the Industry Advisory Board Meeting for WISER-IUCRC.
Our IAB Meeting and REC are 2-day events where it’s a pleasure to welcome and meet Energy Industry Leaders and Experts.
To prepare for the events themselves, we have a series of LinkedIn posts to introduce the concept and invite everyone. This includes:
Panelists Introductions, Leadership Insights, & Keynote Speakers ( We also post about Keynote Speakers and Thank them for coming - day of ).
For closed events like the IAB Meeting, we also prepare and send out Save the Dates with nearby accommodations, building directions, parking, and provide relevant information to our invite & member contact lists.
It was truly insightful having a hand with the planning operations of events like these, I was able to assist with:
Reserving facilities and placing orders for necessities like the Welcome Table & Coat Rack, Reserving Private Meeting Rooms, Catering Orders, Merchandise Design & Ordering, Setting up & Tracking EventBrite Registration, & Preparation/Ordering of Programming & Supporting Materials.
At the events themselves, it’s invigorating to be around so many inspired and successful people. I would help set up our welcome reception using our banners as a signal with meeting room signs nearby. From there, I’d greet anyone who entered attendee or not, and set up all attendees with things such as:
Check-in, Programming, Supporting Materials, Name-Tag & Lanyard, Merchandise, & Direction.
During the events, we not only document with photography but we also conducted a series of interviews where our Director of Operations is able to isolate attendees and send them over to me where I await with relevant 1-pagers, sample questions w/ example answers, and keep them around until Paul Hook from Fuzehub is ready for our next interviewee.
Nothing should go to waste though. At our Renewable Energy Conference, our Team: Yeimi, Rebecca, Celene, and myself were actively talking to all passerby and informing them of our events and activities. We gained nearly 250 Followers on our LinkedIn page by doing so. We managed to convince anyone who wanted spare merchandise or even a treat leftover from our catering to simply follow our page!
Post event operations are simple, Recaps & Thank You’s. We’re sure to include links to our freshly updated website galleries as well!
While our Center of Excellence is NYSTAR recognized, our other base of operations is WISER-IUCRC. The Center for Weather Innovation, Smart Energy, & Resilience is an Industry University Cooperative Research Center. Backed by the NSF, our members and other organizations have a direct say in the pursuit of research for a reliable energy future. Researchers from the University at Albany and the University of Connecticut often work together to deliver research results.
My part & responsibility in this process is to help members get the results. Once Results are out and sent to us there are the following actions:
A series of Result Announcements on LinkedIn to inform our audience to be on the lookout.
A packet summary of all Funded Project Results to be sent to members, I’ve prepared 2024 & 2025 Funded Project Results.
Website Updates under a Members Only Password Protected page to release and hold Funded Project Results for Members.
Website Updates following the IAB Meeting to inform members of upcoming 2026 Funded Projects.
Updating our Solutions Fact Sheet & WISER 1-Pager annually with respective projects.
Preparation and Distribution of the North American Forecasting Model: Outage, Data, & Load 1-Pager.
An achievement of my work through this is my North American 1-pager being one of the Top Google Image Searches for North American Forecasting!
Previously mentioned are the series of website updates I perform for WISER in regard to our Funded Projects venture.
The Pride and Joy of my time at the COE is not Funded Projects though. It is the Website Development and Refresh of the two domains WISER-IUCRC.com & WeatherAnalytics.org. While Funded Projects may have been the first big solo project I took lead on, it was a marvel to work together with Yeimi Umana on WeatherAnalytics Benchmarking. With the recommendation of our Director, Yeimi and I performed a benchmarking analysis on WeatherAnalytics using a set of criteria to score and rank our COE against others to improve and learn more about our website. From there, she ended up taking a social media lead where I took over on website updating & performed a large refresh on WeatherAnalytics.
Our WISER domain sees a near 3x increase in visitors likely boosted by the newly upload of research results and information.
Our WeatherAnalytics domain has nearly a 2x increase in visitors since my joining of the COE.
These are metrics based off 1-year of my employment there compared to the previous year. While WeatherAnalytics underwent a full refresh retouching every page to ensure uniformity, Newsrooms, Galleries, Contact Methods, and FAQ were added to each site. Other Additions include:
A brand new homepage for WeatherAnalytics, A landing page for the Renewable Energy Conference, Speaker information & biographies, A landing page for funded projects, A page for our first Webinar - post and pre webinar, Galleries for each event, & I’m sure there’s more!
The Conclusion