Recent grad says internship was a good career ‘try-on’

Alexandra Papadakis ’21 has long been interested in food. When she started at UNH, she thought that interest would take her in the direction of how it’s grown, harvested, marketed, consumed. So she majored in sustainable agriculture and food systems, adding the dual major ecogastronomy. Then she started thinking more about hunger.

During the summer following her freshman year, Papadakis participated in the Hamel Center’s Research Experience and Apprenticeship Program (REAP), designed for first-year honor students. Her goal was to get a better handle on food systems through research.

The following spring, Papadakis signed on with the UNH Sustainability Institute’s Changemaker Collaborative Semester in the City program to do an internship in Boston, working in the public policy department at the anti-hunger organization Project Bread.

It was after those experiences that Papadakis changed her major to nutrition and dietetics and ecogastronomy, with a minor in sustainable agriculture.

She was recently back on campus as part of a panel in Professor Jesse Stabile Morrell’s professional perspectives on nutrition course. She shared with students the profound impact her internship had on her career path, saying it allowed her to “try a career on for size.” She also shared how her hands-on experience became a positive focal point in her job interviews after college.

During her internship, she shared that working at Project Bread “reinforced my drive to want to make positive change toward making sure hunger isn’t a problem that persists in our communities long-term.”

She’s still driven: After training with Simmons University in community nutrition and health promotion and a job as an inpatient dietitian at Mass General Hospital, she’s back at Project Bread as a coordinator on the healthcare partnerships team.

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