Kai Rose (she/her/hers) is an Evaluation and Research Unit (ERU) intern in the Department of County Management (DCM). She grew up in northeast Portland and loves the weather and being close to nature. She enjoys the Oregon coast in particular, as it is such a unique experience compared to other shores across the country.
When asked “How has the internship been so far?” Kai said, “This has been more than an internship. My supervisor Alison Sachet has truly been a mentor and is so passionate about the work she does. She’s helped me both personally and professionally.” Kai shared with us that she was able to bond with Alison over their shared experience of being a parent during their higher education experience.
Kai earned her associates degree from Portland Community College and is currently working on finishing her degree at the University of Oregon. She is majoring in Data Science with a focus on Marketing Analytics and minoring in Business. When asked, “What pushed you to come into this career/education field?” Kai stated, “I liked that it wasn’t secular. I like that it is multidisciplinary and I can practice math, statistics, and programming and not in one particular field.”
Alison Sachet, ERU Manager, was initially drawn to becoming a mentor because of her previous experience as a graduate student and professor. She saw an opportunity to become a mentor and build relationships with students, which was one of her favorite aspects of working in higher education.
Alison stated, “Kai is brilliant and amazing in every way! We are incredibly fortunate to have her as part of our ERU team and at the County. She was instrumental in helping us develop a process for coordinating and preparing data for the Employment Trends project. She has also contributed to other projects, such as the Countywide Employee Survey and helping the College to County team develop metrics to track demographics and trends of C2C applicants and interns.
Kai is thoughtful, extraordinarily organized, an excellent communicator, highly responsible, and has superb problem solving and data analytic skills. She is an absolute joy to work with and the County would be lucky to have her continue as a regular employee. Whatever Kai chooses to do and wherever life takes her, she has an incredibly bright future! ”.
Alison’s advice to other mentors is to take time to get to know your intern, including learning each other’s communication styles and encouraging them to build relationships with others around the county. She also recommends creating a particular project for your intern to work on based on their skills and interests for future growth.
One of Kai’s most notable projects is the employment trends project. The research primarily examines demographic patterns in employee movement, such as separations, using data from Workday, which is the County’s workforce system of record. She used Tableau Prep, part of the Tableau data visualization software to prepare and organize data for analyses and use in dashboards.
Since then, Kai has continued working on the Evaluation and Research Unit as an intern as she nears her graduation.