Light of Gold PR, Marketing, and Consulting

I Interned for Light of Gold PR Marketing and Consulting LLC from May to July 2016. I had a great experience working for Debra. She was a fantastic mentor to me and the other Interns there. I became more organized and flexible when it comes to completing priority tasks. Debra would give her interns constructive feedback on how he / she could improve on their tasks and be more productive. She cares about her interns and wants nothing but the best for them. I've obtained many valuable skills in this internship that will help me towards my future career goals. Some of the things that I've learned include the following:
• Complete follow-up emails, phone calls and thank you notes to entrepreneurs
• Attend networking events to connect with other business leaders and professionals
• Tasks include updating invoices, quotations, and estimates for clients
• Posts on social media, created e-newsletters flyers, updated media lists, press releases etc.
• Worked on several projects and tasks utilizing Google Drive, Constant Contact, Zoho etc.
If you are the kind of person who is willing to learn and is not afraid of constructive criticism, than this internship would be a perfect fit for you. The only way that you grow as a person is to learn from your mistakes and correcting them, not by blaming other people. I want to thank Debra for everything that she taught me and I know that we will stay in touch.

I have had the great privilege of knowing Debra Dixon for over twenty years and in all of that time, she has never ceased to inspire with her commitment to all that she does. She’s not only a consummate professional, but very well versed in business, sales and technology, among a host of other areas. She’s always willing to impart knowledge, and I know that she takes great pride in being a mentor to young aspiring professionals, especially the interns at her PR company. Her goal is to provide them with the tools they will need to advance their careers, whether in the PR field or elsewhere. As a person who cares deeply for the future of the young men and women interning for her, Debra is always willing to address any concerns or questions they might have.

I am father to a daughter who came of age during the rise of social media, and I always tell her to be mindful of her posts online as it is all too easy for prospective employers and others to find them. With that in mind, it’s unfortunate that one of Debra’s interns would elect to post erroneous information as opposed to giving Debra a call or sending an email. This course of action is not only vindictive, but it shows poor ability to handle disputes in a mature fashion. The internet is not the place to settle scores and the fact that Debra has chosen to keep the door of communication open in spite of what this intern has written speaks volumes of Debra’s character. Most others in the same position would likely sever communication and they’d frankly be justified in doing so.

Anybody fortunate enough to have Debra in their corner should considerate themselves fortunate as she can only be an asset to them. She’s a very special and rare breed of person indeed.

This review is based on the personal opinion of an intern. I interned at Light of Gold PR Spring 2016 and it was a very interesting experience. If you are looking for an internship that will give you a lot of hands-on experience and you have no other options I would say this is a perfect fit. However, be aware that this is a REALLY SMALL PR company, there are no existing employees, which means there is practically no chance for employment after the internship. This internship teaches you a lot and you get LOADS of experience you may not get anywhere else. On the other hand, It is very disorganized and as an intern you are expected to do full time work for free, as the internship is for experience or college credit only. This is NOT so bad if you really need it ,however, it gets really bothersome when you are expected to do loads of unnecessary menial work that does not really help you in the long run. We started off the day with really LONG emails blasted to every intern working that day, with different tasks that were not assigned to specific people or were assigned to numerous people. This creates a problem because not everyone knows what to do because we do not all work at the same time or know when something is completed or not. It is annoying when you have to do work that is not fully assigned to you and are yelled at for completing something someone ELSE already completed. The CEO seemed like she never wanted us talking to each other so it was difficult to keep in contact with one another when we were not all together. She also had a terrible habit of micro-managing everything we did. We had to send hourly status updates, as well as daily status reports to her in addition to adding them into Zoho at the end of the day EVEN WHEN SHE WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS US that whole day. It was very difficult to keep up with tasks and worry about updating her every hour ,every day and entering them into Zoho. The team video calls were really frequent as well which often killed productivity. Her equipment is VERY SLOW and outdated which always made video calls really difficult to connect. I just wished she understood that many of us could not get things done as fast because of all of these problems. The CEO is the only employee so I do understand why she wanted updates all the time but it was distracting and made it hard to get work done in a timely manner. I would often use my tablet or phone to complete some of the tasks because it was very hard to work on computers that were crashing every minute, and it didn't become a problem till the END of my internship which I found quite humorous. If there was a problem with my phone being used it should have been told to me BEFORE or when the problem started, NOT when I am about to end my internship. I feel like it was an attempt to to extend my internship so I can "improve" because she did that to another intern I was working with. The CEO emailed my mentor less than a WEEK before I was ending my internship ASKING HER IF IT WAS POSSIBLE TO EXTEND MY INTERNSHIP. I was REALLY upset because the only reason I was on my phone was because I had to finish tasks. At the end of the internship we were all supposed to get recommendation letters and a movie or restaurant voucher. I ended my internship April 2016, it is now July 2016 and I have not received ANYTHING. Nor have any of the interns I worked with. She finally sent our recommendation letters (which were the same) in June but the vouchers were still not sent and numerous emails and texts sent to her have yet to be answered. This is extremely inconvenient, especially when we needed our recommendation letters, the problem does not lie with us not receiving our vouchers or getting our recommendations late, the problem is that we are now being completely ignored. When you have a company it is important to reply, especially to your past interns. Overall the company provides a great experience, but I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT.