Natalia Remis joined Knight Foundation in 2012 as a returning summer intern in the Arts Program. She attends Columbia University and is Associate Copy Editor for the Columbia Daily Spectator and Head Copy Editor for The Eye, the newspaper’s weekly magazine. A Miami native, Natalia attended New World School of the Arts for classical violin.

In Natalia’s words:

“As an intern in the Arts department, I worked one-on-one with Dennis Scholl, VP/Arts, to create a presentation showcasing a successful Arts program based in Detroit that Knight Foundation is considering extending to other Knight-funded communities. This presentation, which I researched, created, and presented on my own at the quarterly meeting under Dennis’s guidance, was the highlight of my internship. Although I was just a lowly intern, I was able to make an impact at the foundation by introducing the Program Directors from all eight resident communities to a successful grant program and soliciting their input for an expansion.

“Plus, this project was fun. Besides becoming a PowerPoint pro, I got to sift through pictures from a Ms. Zombie pageant, research museum collections, and scour Flickr for eye-catching photos while building my presentation and writing my speech. All in all, my work on this project mirrors the entirety of my internship experience here—I spent most of my two summers at Knight working directly with a VP and, as Dennis likes to say, ‘Doing real work,’ all while having fun and learning more about the world of arts philanthropy.”