Meet Ally
Internship: Whole Life Pet Products
College: UMass Amherst
When Dalton native Ally Brown was studying marketing and information technology at UMass Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management, she knew she wanted a summer internship close to home. “I had never heard of anyone doing an internship in Berkshire County, and I wasn’t really sure where to start looking,” she said.
But as soon as she started searching, listings popped up through Lever’s Berkshire Interns program, where she landed a marketing internship at Whole Life Pet Products in Pittsfield. She ended up spending the summer working on social media, digital strategy, and event coordination for the pet foods company for the summer of 2018, which helped her gain work experience and a local professional network.
“It was cool to see everything come together,” she said. “We’d talk about marketing concepts in class, and I’d be executing it in real life that summer.”
Brown still keeps in touch with Whole Life’s owners, John and Jennifer Gigliotti. “They were so supportive of me. They really instilled a lot of confidence in me,” she said. “And that experience solidified that marketing was the path I wanted to take. “
Thanks to her Berkshire Interns experience and other internship opportunities, Brown lined up a job in the Berkshires even before she graduated last May. he is now Marketing Manager at The Pass, a vertically integrated adult-use cannabis dispensary in Sheffield that wholesales across the state. As the only full-time marketing person on staff, she’s responsible for everything from social media to website updates to graphic design. “It’s been a great learning experience for me,” she said.
Brown remains passionate about the Berkshires, and feels lucky to have launched her career here. “I acquired so much through Berkshire Interns, from networking, to developing my business professionalism and gaining true experience in the marketing field for the first time,” she said. “It’s an amazing program. It’s great to know I still have a network from that in Berkshire County.”
