BY KEELIN EVERLY-LANG for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 8/28/2026
If you attended an event in Pierce County this summer, there’s a chance you got to meet one of nine interns who just completed their 12-week paid internship with Pierce County.
One intern spent the summer asking more than 400 people the question, “How often do you ride your bike, take a bus, or walk to the places that you go most frequently?” and then having conversations about how they could use sustainable transportation in their lives more frequently.
Based on their responses to this question, she got to provide resources to help them access more sustainable options more frequently.
Another intern worked with county staff and local organizations to design, plan, and execute four camps for specialized recreation, a department that has programs for individuals with intellectual disabilities.
Others built up the county’s social media and created communication materials, sampled river bugs, changed the oil in the county’s fleet of vehicles, or created trauma-informed mindfulness workshops and databases.
The internship program is a win-win for the county and the participants. Both government employers like Pierce County and the youngest generations of job seekers face systemic challenges that programs like this one can help address.
From disruptions in job markets and education due to AI, ripple effects from the pandemic, and the challenges caused by chaotic funding cuts at the federal level, programs that focus on building specific pipelines for young adults at the beginning of their careers can have a big impact.
One study looked at insights from a paid internship pilot linking public health students and local health departments and found that “the pandemic, which exacerbated existing societal inequities, also heightened adolescents’ social awareness, provoked feelings of uncertainty, and altered adolescents’ short- and long-term plans for educational and career prospects.”
The pandemic also brought “high turnover and depleted applicant pools, which affected almost every county position” at Pierce County, and “skill-specific national labor shortages have compounded these trends, hitting wastewater positions, civil engineers, medical examiners, and corrections officers particularly hard,” according to a case study on positive changes made by Pierce County that was published in 2023.
The Pierce County internship program began in 2016 with just a few interns and has grown in the past decade. This year, it added new departments that had never participated before and had nine interns across seven departments.
At a presentation to the Pierce County Council during a study session on Aug. 18, summer internship program coordinator Charissa Hudson shared that the county has been getting positive attention for the program.
“We’ve had so many folks reach out from peer jurisdictions, not just peer jurisdictions in Washington but multiple other states, to spend time with me . . . to talk through our program,” Hudson shared.
Only eight out of the 39 counties in Washington state have a formal, publicly identified internship program, although there may be others that just don’t have documented internship information online.
Common questions from other jurisdictions include curiosity about how they started the program, how it has grown, what they do, and how they fund it, Hudson said. “It’s been really, really exciting to get to share, and for me a real pride point in my career that we get to have people continue to look to Pierce County” she said, to learn about their efforts to “engage the new people coming into the workforce in public service.”
The majority of the presentation was led by the interns themselves, who shared how their work connected to Pierce County’s values of collaboration, transparency, excellence, and integrity.
Throughout the summer, the interns worked in their departments about 80 percent of the time and spent the other 20 percent of the time with the cohort, doing professional development activities. These activities ranged from training and site tours to mock interviews.
Interns this year included:
- Elizabeth Yee, specialized recreation intern for Parks and Recreation
- Zoe Love, sustainable transportation intern with Ride Together Pierce
- Eve Goddard, community outreach intern for the Long Range Planning Division
- Jacob Caddali, research and policy intern for the County Council Office
- Tyler Lawrence, intern for Fleet Maintenance
- Tyler Hinton, energy efficiency intern for Facilities Management
- Kiki Dial, water quality monitoring intern for the Surface Water Management Monitoring Unit
- Jamie Nguyen, communications intern for Human Services
- Shakaela Riggins, victims services intern for the Family Justice Center
After hearing the presentations, council member Robyn Denson celebrated the interns’ accomplishments and contributions, saying, “The projects were all amazing and some real value-adds to our departments. All of the things that you worked on are priorities that the council has worked with the departments on, and you all really helped move this forward.”
Council Vice Chair Paul Herrera also echoed the value of the internship program for both the interns and the county.
“This is a great program. All through mankind’s history, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, there was always some type of mentorship within a community or within a tribe. This is kind of the same thing. You know, you’re part of the Pierce County tribe. You’re allowed to have the possibility to see what right looks like here, and you bring that new spark of ideas to an established government entity that can lumber along doing the same thing we’ve always done. You bring some great new ideas.”
The internship program also aligns with other statewide goals. In 2024, Gov. Jay Inslee signed Executive Order 24-04, directing Washington state government to foster “a diverse workforce that reflects the richness of all our residents” by assessing applicants based on their skills, not just their past job titles.
In an article published this year by the Washington State Association of Counties, a local government consultant wrote that one of the most important recommendations starts with community engagement.
“Local governments can build robust talent pipelines by partnering with colleges, trade schools, and organizations that serve nontraditional candidates… and invest in outreach and training programs that prioritize skills over credentials. By taking these steps, local governments will open doors to a wider range of candidates, strengthen their teams, and deliver better outcomes for residents,” the article continued.
The program just wrapped, but planning for next year will begin in just a few months. During December and January, Pierce County departments and divisions apply to host an intern, and applications for next year’s internships will open in February.
You can watch the interns’ full presentation about their work on the Pierce County Council’s YouTube page.
This story is part of an editorially independent series of solutions-focused stories about resources for youth and young adults in Pierce County, funded by our Resource Section sponsor, Check-In With Yourself WA.
Reach out to keelin@weekly-volcano.com with story pitches or to share your experience as a young adult accessing resources in Pierce County.
