She Graduated from our Future Leaders Intern Program. Now She Manages It.

Micaela Generali first set foot in Audible’s Newark headquarters when she was 16 and a brand-new intern from Newark’s Science Park High School. Generali was part of Audible’s Future Leaders paid internship program, which has been readying local high school students for successful careers since we moved our headquarters to Newark in 2007. The high school internship extends into the Audible Scholars program once interns leave for college, creating a six-year work-based learning program that supports students from age 16 through their first job. In some cases, that first job is with us, but Generali represents an exciting first: the one-time Future Leader was hired in December to manage the very program where she got her start.

“It’s amazing every day! I never would have imagined it,” says Generali. Born in Uruguay, Generali and her family moved to Newark when she was a year old. After high school, she continued interning with Audible while she attended Rutgers University in Newark, where she majored in psychology and Latinx studies. She wasn’t planning to start a career with us after college, expecting she’d go into counseling, research, or a similar field instead.

By then, her internship at Audible was focused on our Global Center for Urban Development, working with Future Leaders program director Jeff Anderson to plan events for the new cohort of interns. Along the way, Generali found herself bonding with the young students over their shared experiences. "We’re all from Newark and I went to the same school as some of them,” she says. At Rutgers, she had been a peer advisor, working with first-generation students like herself. “That’s what started my love for working with students.” She realized that taking a job with the GCUD meant she could continue doing what she loved, helping students navigate the workplace from the perspective of a first-generation student whose parents don’t work in professional settings.

Now, as the manager for the Future Leaders program, she’s advocating for more than 100 interns daily. Partly, that means encouraging interns to get out of their comfort zones—something she says was a game-changer for her. “I was at a point in my college career where I was taking easy classes, staying on the safe side of everything,” but then Anderson told her about a 10-week marketing internship in our Seattle offices. “It would be my first time away from home, and I’d be on my own with just two other interns, so I wasn’t sure,” she said. But she went forward with it, even braving her fear of flying to get there. “It ended up being the best experience of my undergraduate career.”

To help others have that opportunity, she urges them to approach Audible employees and introduce themselves. “They’re very, ‘You want me to talk to strangers?’” she says. “That’s how I was in high school, too—the only experience you have talking to adults is with teachers, in these very prescriptive conversations. It’s a whole new experience talking to professionals and learning from them, and lots of people here are willing to take on mentees and share professional advice and career trajectories.”

In addition to getting interns to engage with as many people at Audible as possible, Generali helped implement a new component of Future Leaders called “Summer Institute,” a 100-hour training program in which students learn workplace skills before they ever even start working with managers. “Asking high school interns to work on teams at a large company can be intimidating if they are not first geared up with the correct tools,” explains Generali. The skills students learn at the Summer Institute include professional branding, time management, building relationships, active listening, smart goals, and a number of digital literacy skills. “These trainings help students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds by giving them the opportunity to to be as competitive as other peers when they start applying to jobs in the future.”

Generali will also help grow the Future Leaders tech internship program at our hub in Cambridge, Mass., doubling the current cohort of six. She says she may also use Audible’s tuition reimbursement program to pursue her Master’s degree. Whatever she does, it’s clear it will be for the benefit of all interns who pass through our doors. “I can’t explain the immense joy I feel when I am able to support these students, whose shoes I was in just a few years ago. Previously being an intern in this program allows me to share insights of the intern experience and gives me a better understanding of what they need to succeed.”