New Venture Accelerator student interns don’t just sit back and wait for direction. They embrace their own entrepreneurial sense of curiosity, urgency, and excitement for everything they are involved in.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Auburn University community is the annual influx of youthful energy. Each fall, as students arrive on campus, there’s a palpable surge of enthusiasm. They bring with them curiosity, passion, and a zest for new experiences. They are eager to meet new people, explore unfamiliar places, and engage with fresh ideas.

Their journey is not just about mastering a field of study; it’s about self-discovery, learning to craft the life they envision, deciding the kind of person they aspire to become, and what impact they want to have on the world.  

This journey defines an “exceptional student experience,” which at Auburn, is the foremost goal of Strategic Plan 2035. Individuals like Ward Swift, entrepreneur-in-residence and communications director at the New Venture Accelerator, have the privilege of witnessing this transformative journey firsthand every day. 

“A vibrant campus culture is at the very heartbeat of the student experience,” Swift said. “At the New Venture Accelerator (NVA), students are not only dreaming about their future, they are also actively bringing their entrepreneurial ideas to life by developing their own startup businesses. And as their needs have evolved, so have we at the NVA, most recently by establishing an immersive Student Intern Program.” 

The NVA was established to support students, faculty, and local entrepreneurs who are interested in launching new ventures or enhancing existing ones. Managed by the Auburn University Harbert College of Business the NVA’s team of nine Entrepreneurs-In-Residence (EIR) collaborate with 20-25 start-ups at any given time.

These EIRs offer coaching, mentorship, and guidance on how to conduct market analyses, identify investors, develop pitch strategies, and scale a business. Swift and his EIR colleagues work closely with talented young innovators, helping them transform their ideas into viable business ventures, some of which are nurtured within the NVA incubator office space. 

“Today, you’ll find top-tier students from the Harbert College of Business collaborating with industrial design students and engineering majors, all creating their own unique exceptional student experience here at the NVA,” Swift explained. “To support their efforts, we now have three distinct intern teams supporting our resident businesses by offering graphic design, industrial design, and marketing strategy support. They are also fully engaged with one of our newest endeavors, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Collaborative.”  

It didn't begin this way

Initially, aspiring entrepreneurs received free office space and mentoring from the EIRs on staff. However, when it came time to execute their business plans, services like graphic and web design had to be outsourced which required funds the start-ups often lacked.

“This financial challenge sparked a creative solution,” Swift said. “One of the values a business gets from the NVA team is the wealth of knowledge that comes from the EIR’s years of experience, but when you are starting a company, you oftentimes don’t have the capacity to add one more thing to your to do list, or you simply don’t have the capability to execute an EIR’s recommendation.

“So, we saw a need / opportunity to support our businesses in a more tactical sense by creating intern positions for students with marketing, graphic design, and social-media skills, who could come in and help execute business plans in-house and at little to no cost to the startup businesses,” Swift said.  

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In just the past three years, the historical one intern position at the NVA has grown to 15 student intern positions, including a new senior intern role that was established to lead this growing team. 

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Initially tasked to promote the NVA and its resident businesses, the team’s role expanded to also include planning, promoting, and producing the Halloween and Tiger Cage  pitch competition events. 

This growth in capacity and capability was bolstered by the Harbert College of Business Department of Marketing who had students who were also seeking the same kind of hands-on, real-world experience for their marketing majors.

“These students came on board to work with resident companies to define their target market strategies and what their messaging should be. This has not only added another layer of support we give to our startup businesses, but it has also given the marketing students a much-needed opportunity to implement the classroom strategies they’ve learned and simultaneously build their resumes,” said Swift.   

The priorities for the program are simple, “School is number one, fun is number two, and the internship is number three,” said Swift. “Fun is imperative, because if you don’t develop your social skills, you won’t make it in this interdependent world.” 

To be sure, these intern teams don’t make coffee runs or shuffle paper; they are developing a skill set.  They learn from the EIRs, but they also bring what they’ve learned from the classroom to both promote the NVA and address the challenges the resident businesses face.

“I believe the students love it because we don’t tell them what to do,” Swift said, “we tell them what the problem is, what the opportunity is, and then challenge them to go figure out what needs to be done. That’s how the real-world works. It’s their responsibility to generate ideas and solutions for the problems a company is facing, and the interns love it.” 

The student-interns perspective

According to Sarah May, senior marketing intern, Swift is right, but there is more to it for her.

“It’s funny because Ward believes in us, believes we are just ‘go-getters,’ and thinks we work so hard because he gives us creative freedom, and that is a piece of it, but I feel like the other piece is the people here are just too good not to give them our best. 

“It motivates me that I get to work with so many different types of people and different companies, as well as learn from the EIRs who have so much experience. The people here are inspiring and passionate about what they do. It could be an engineering student who has created a product or a person starting a landscape company. If they are here, they have such a passion and enthusiasm for what they do, we genuinely want to promote it.” 

May, a Nashville native, was looking for ways to get involved on campus. When she joined the NVA team during her sophomore year, she discovered her place at Auburn, and more importantly, gained a confidence she believes she wouldn’t have developed solely through classroom experiences.

“I’ve learned everything from the basics, like the importance of following up with an email to confirm an event speaker or the necessity of working with the financial and legal departments to get pre-approvals for purchases and licensing, to managing the more complex like actually leading the team through an eight-month long creative, budgeting and filming process to produce a promotional video for the NVA,” she said.  

“Every time I get to watch the video , I get emotional because it is so awesome to think that it came fully from our team and we are so proud of it,” May added.

She and her team were granted permission to produce the video, but they had to manage the project start to finish.  This included gathering quotes to establish the budget, writing the script, casting and blocking the scenes, and scheduling filming days for interviews and pitch competitions.  The project took eight long months to complete.   

“It was probably the longest project I ever worked on, but also the best,” May said. “I gained so much confidence through the process. Once the video was complete, we presented it at pitch competitions and delivered a pitch presentation to the Auburn University marketing team, the College of Architecture, Design and Construction, and the College of Engineering marketing teams as well to ask them to promote the NVA on their platforms.

“Initially, I felt intimidated speaking up in front of professionals because I was just an intern, but these meetings really transformed my approach to work. I realized people are just people, and I am confident in my abilities and perspectives, so I am no longer afraid to share them even as ‘just an intern’,” May added.  “Everything now is a lot less intimidating. I see the world is not that serious, work is not that serious, it is fun, you just have to take a deep breath and a step back and say, I get to do this, I get to take on this challenge.” 

Set to graduate this semester, May reflects on her time with NVA.

“The NVA made my college experience,” she said “I found a home here. It feels like family, and Ward Swift is one of the best mentors I’ve ever had. People told me, ‘Be sure to get to know your professors because when you graduate, you’ll need references.’  I appreciate my professors, but never felt like they could really get to know me in a classroom setting. But here, Ward Swift has worked with me, he knows me. He not only knows me, but he has also shaped me into who I now am.” 

May added: “Everyone here is a picture of what the Auburn family is all about – kind and collaborative, always excited for one another, and when you ask for help the answer is always, ‘sure, I’ll help you with that’. I came here for a job and an opportunity to build my resume, but I am walking away with so much more. I’ve grown my resume, sure, but I’ve grown personally and professionally, and I really feel that is what college is all about.” 

Recent graduate, Valerie Heffernan, couldn’t agree more.  Her experience at the NVA was also the highlight of her college experience.

“It was truly the best college experience I could ever ask for,” Heffernan said. “I feel like I learned so much from working at the NVA, and all the Entrepreneurs-In-Residence, as well as the student entrepreneurs and community entrepreneurs I worked with at the New Venture Accelerator.  

“They are the kindest, most genuine people ever. They are always looking to help you, give you advice, extend a helping hand to you. It is really unique. Yes, we’re marketing interns, but Ward trusts us so much, and he gives us total creative freedom to market the NVA in the best way we see fit.”  

Both women have honed their skills, and in the process, discovered where they would like to see their next journey begin.  May aspires to work in the music industry and interned with a music label in Nashville last summer.  Heffernan continues to work with the NVA, for a few more months, while also completing an internship as part of the Auburn Athletics Department Digital Marketing and Revenue Generation team.  She has her sights set on professional sports.

“I’ve learned that the skills I acquired at the NVA – my event planning skills, content creation skills, photo shoot abilities, video shoot experience, and e-mail marketing – all coincide with the post grad internship with Auburn Athletics,” Heffernan says.

“You know, the really terrific thing for our interns” Swift shares, “is they are working with real businesses with real business challenges; they are working for different businesses and different types of businesses, which gets them to the point where they begin to understand that there is a template for how to structure a business plan.  It doesn’t matter if you are selling donuts or rocket ships the business planning steps are the same. And when you get comfortable with the fact that there is a process you go through, regardless of what the company is, regardless of what the product is, you can then find the industry you are most interested in and chase your dream.” 

“Sarah and Valerie’s experience is exactly the result we hope for our student interns,” Swift said.  “They are now highly marketable in a competitive field because of this work experience with many different companies. And for Sarah, she has already acquired management experience by overseeing this team of interns.  That is what makes this program such an asset to the University. It not only fulfills the NVA’s mission to support start-up businesses, but it also creates new opportunities for student involvement, to enhance the student experience and to provide essential support to emerging companies.”   

Swift added: “Beyond attaining a degree, business education today recognizes the need to develop entrepreneurial skill sets among our graduates, as the competitive landscape demands out-of-the box, big idea thinking. From our own New Venture Accelerator and our robust mentoring, coaching, counseling offerings and business idea pitch competitions, to the Auburn Research and Technology Foundation, the Intellectual Property Exchange, the Lowder Center for Family Business and Entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurship minor offered at the Harbert College of Business, Auburn University is fast developing a reputation as having one of the best entrepreneurship programs in the country.” 

The New Venture Accelerator is always looking for top student talent who can thrive in an entrepreneurial environment.  If you are interested in learning more about the Auburn University entrepreneurial ecosystem, please reach out to Jill Heffernan , our incoming 2025-2026 lead intern, at jnh0053@auburn.edu. 

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Learn more about the New Venture Accelerator.