A Success Story of one of our J-1 intern and trainee participants

Kirsten from the UK

Kirsten was an intern from the UK. We placed her in a host company with which we have worked for more than a decade – the San Francisco Art Exchange.

Prior to her internship at the San Francisco Art Exchange, Kirsten graduated with a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, in English. Over the course of her studies, she obtained extensive writing, film, editing, and theater experience worked as the Head of UK Fiction for a literary arts magazine called Crooked Teeth, and presented one of her plays, Case Number, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She’s also written articles for the SPCA in South Africa. She is being supervised by the Creative Director, Theron Kabrich, and the intern’s contribution to the fields of communication and creative writing is very much valued by the host company, according to her supervisor. Kirsten recently wrote to us regarding her cultural activities during the program:

‘For Thanksgiving, I went away with my new friends. We drove to Death Valley on Thanksgiving Thursday, however unfortunately we could not get into the park as the roads were snowed in. Instead, we drove to Las Vegas and day-tripped on Friday to the Valley of Fire. Here we hiked and ate pumpkin pie – it was a great time! We spent the next two days exploring Vegas and drove home on Sunday’.

Prior to that, she wrote to us:

‘I joined a meet-up group in San Francisco called Tribe. Together, we drove to Lake Tahoe and stayed there for a weekend. We got to hike and explore the lake. It was beautiful and I learned a lot more about Northern California’s landscape and about animals in Northern California. I also got to go to a classic American diner on the way back home’.