By Sarah Rose:

It is a pleasure to introduce you to Catholic Community Connection Summer Fellow Peter Marra. Peter is working as the Project Management Intern with Cleveland Catholic Charities.

Peter is a rising senior at John Carroll University, majoring in Marketing at the Boler School of Business. He is part of the JCU Marketing Club and is also a member of the Beta Theta Pi social fraternity. He was connected to the fellowship via mutual friends of the CCC president, who

thought it would be a great fit and he enjoyed that it presented an opportunity to grow in his faith. This is his first internship and he says that he applied because he heard positive things from previous fellows and thought it would be a great way to spend the summer.

Peter’s day-to-day experience at his fellowship consisted of completing a variety of tasks assigned to him by his supervisor. These included, but were not limited to, creating charts, presentations, and compiling sets of information provided to him by his supervisor. He also had the opportunity to sit in on meetings and take notes, which was a beneficial learning experience for how a professional workplace operates.

One project he greatly enjoyed working on was to examine the eight counties served by Cleveland Catholic Charities and look through the various organizations that provide workforce development in those areas. He analyzed those organizations to see who Catholic Charities could potentially partner with in each county and also discerned if there were other ways to support the organizations in their work.

Peter is very interested in working with statistics in the future, so his work during his fellowship was a great fit! He enjoyed looking into stats of the different counties that Catholic Charities serves and analyzing the data to discern their basic needs. He has always liked looking at charts and graphs to see how different demographics change over time. He noted that demographics are a big piece of navigating who to appeal to in marketing (when to appeal, what demographics are most important, etc.), which is right in line with his major.

When asked about support in the workplace, Peter spoke highly of his supervisor (Heather Stoll) and expressed gratitude for her advice on creating professional and presentable projects. He also reiterated the benefits of being taken to meetings where he could observe and take notes while learning how to adapt to a professional environment after he obtains his degree.