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Thomasville interns take over city podcast, highlight program that led to three hires in 2025
Summary
Interns hosted an "intern takeover" episode of the City of Thomasville's Thomasville Insights podcast to describe daily duties, what they learned, and to promote a July 24 Kids Community Day; hosts said three of seven 2025 interns were later hired into full-time city roles.
Harper Page, an engineering-department intern at the City of Thomasville, hosted an "intern takeover" episode of the Thomasville Insights podcast where city interns introduced themselves, described day-to-day duties and what they have learned on the job, and promoted an upcoming Kids Community Day.
The takeover episode opened with hosts from the city's marketing department, including Austin Reams, who said the internship program has been running for four years and yields paid work opportunities inside city government. Ricky Zambrano, also with the marketing team, noted that "out of our 7 interns that we had in 2025, 3 of those were hired on and are now full time employees" — a statistic the episode used to emphasize the program's role in recruiting municipal staff.
Interns gave specific examples of their work. Alyssa Bradshaw, a customer-service intern who said she attends Valdosta State University, described rotating through multiple customer-service units, listing "cashiering, billing, collections, call center, new accounts, dispatch, tax" as the kinds of teams where she has worked. "It's a lot more than that," she said, adding the rotations gave her insight into how municipal services are delivered.
Shakina, an IT intern, described technical support duties: "On a daily, I help with printers, monitors, PCs, like, anything involving a computer, basically. But, yeah, I help with tickets, of course." She said the internship mixes routine support with occasional assigned tests and periodic trips to nearby Camilla to assist staff.
In the second segment, Jackley, a finance intern, said he works under the city's CFO, Ashley Cason, and has seen how budgeting and delegation are handled in a municipal finance office. He described municipal budgeting as a demanding environment and referenced the city's roughly $140,000,000 budget as context for the office's workload. Keely Walden, a Main Street marketing intern, discussed the municipal building move and renovation challenges for historic properties, saying grants and preservation rules lengthen timelines and require careful adaptation.
Throughout the episode interns emphasized soft skills and networking. Jackley recommended talking to coworkers about nonwork topics to build rapport; Keely recommended "reading the room" to learn how colleagues approach the workday. Harper Page closed by thanking other interns who could not appear and announcing a Kids Community Day on July 24 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Ritz Amphitheater, offering back-to-school supplies, food and music; listeners were directed to discoverthomasville.com for the community calendar.
The episode underscores the city program's goal of exposing students to municipal operations and, in several cases, leading to paid municipal employment. The podcast credits list the City of Thomasville marketing department as producer and direct listeners to thomasville.org for more information.
