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Bidding Farewell to Benton Maddox |
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Friday was Benton’s last day. I’m bummed. The idea to offer an internship to a Benedictine High School Cadet was mine. Our first intern, Patrick Jordan, came from the Governor’s School in Richmond. When he started as a high school junior, he was very quiet but extremely bright. At first he had simple tasks like filing and scanning in returned vouchers from one of the customer loyalty programs we administer. Over time we realized...
he was capable of much more, and he became a valuable part of the team.
With that experience under my belt, it occurred to me that this internship thing could be much bigger than just finding a kid who needed an after school or summer job. We had the opportunity to introduce a talented teen to the business world, specifically sales and marketing and provide him with a positive example he may one day have to emulate when he enters the workforce. How cool is that?
We developed a program and introduced it at Benedictine High School. Why Benedictine? For starters, my son graduated from there, and I love the school and wanted to stay involved. Secondly, the country was in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the great depression, which was partially brought about by the greed and excess of many of our corporate leaders. This seemed a perfect time to extend Benedictine’s mission of helping its Cadets develop morally, academically, physically and spiritually so that they are ready to succeed as adults in college and in life - to developing future business leaders as well.
Benton joined us right after graduation, foregoing beach week, in order to earn money for his upcoming matriculation at Clemson University. On the first day, I shared my idea for an intern blog as a way of promoting the internship in future years. He promptly came up with the name Intern Rounds and began journaling his daily activities and learning online. He was courteous and inquisitive and took on anything we threw at him. He even gratuitously accepted my advice on writing, something my son would never do!
Benton heads off to college soon. At this point, he thinks he wants to own a brewery one day. We hope he learned a few things that will help him achieve that objective or any of the 1,000 more he is likely to come up with over the next four years. He became a part of our team, if only briefly, and he left some big shoes to fill next summer!
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