Meaningful Work, Impactful Outcomes

ATLANTA — Across the state, businesses, nonprofits, healthcare organizations, even
municipalities struggle to hire and retain the workforce needed to get essential jobs
done. The Partnership for Innovation (PIN), housed at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise
Innovation Institute (EI 2 ), has been collaborating with these groups to develop a
workforce ready for the future.

Through PIN’s Emerging Innovators cohort of Summer Interns and PIN Fellows —
higher education students and early- to mid-career professionals — the program is
uniquely positioned to leverage its network and expertise to address workforce
challenges facing the region.

PIN brings public and private sector partners across the Southeast together to work
alongside local leaders to connect research, industry, talent, and resources to real-world
needs. The Emerging Innovators program focuses on cultivating the next generation of
problem-solvers who drive innovation. Program participants work in high-demand
sectors including artificial intelligence, manufacturing, clean tech, and healthcare.

“The Emerging Innovators program is unique in that we offer more than just experiential
learning for interns and fellows,” said Cody Cocchi, a PIN program manager. “We also
provide professional development during their term of service.”

The innovative professional development offerings mean interns come away from their
summer projects not just with job experience under their belts, but also with training in
the soft skills employers say are essential in helping new hires and their employers
succeed. Interns participate weekly in sessions with topics including developing a
personal brand, résumé writing, data literacy and storytelling, perfecting your pitch,
adaptability and continuous learning, and more. Fellows are offered biweekly workshops
on similar topics.

Workforce for the Future

KeAndrea Rivers, PIN’s experience lead, designed the professional development
offerings. “I do research to understand what employers are looking for from the
workforce, and I use that research to inform the way I build out the curriculum,” Rivers
said. “I want to ensure that our students are not only earning the experiential piece of
their internships and fellowships, but they’re also earning the professional piece. When
they walk into the workforce, they are prepared with both the hard skills and the soft
skills to ensure they’re well-rounded professionals.”

The response from students and intern project leads to the professional development
workshops has been positive. Several spoke about it at a recent event celebrating the
end of their internships.

“I found the perfecting your pitch workshop to be very helpful,” said Aarya Rijal, a
psychology major from Wesleyan College in Macon, who worked on the Kennesaw
State University (KSU) project 911 Mental Health Crisis Detection and Triage AI Support
for Co-responders. “We were working on perfecting our pitch for today. They gave us
helpful tips that I might not have gotten otherwise.” Learn more about this project.

Emmanuela Nwaonumah, a public health student at Georgia Southern University, who
worked as a communications manager for Healthy Savannah, said the workshop on
data and storytelling resonated with her. “It’s the idea of having to translate the data to
what people understand,” said Nwaonumah, who is pursuing her Ph.D. “We talk a lot
about trying to report something in layman’s language that everybody understands. So, I
found that workshop helpful because it mirrored exactly things that I’ve been dealing
with in the field of public health.” Learn more about this project.

Students weren’t the only ones with positive feedback about the workshops. Project
leaders who manage student interns are invited to sit in on them. Dominic Thomas,
professor of information systems in the Coles College of Business at KSU, leads the
911 project. He has hosted PIN interns for three years and participated in some of the
workshops.

“They had really good content, well run,” Thomas said. “One of the things I have done in
the past, as a professor and as a program lead, is professional development: how to
write your resume, how to interview, all these kinds of things. It’s valuable, and it’s super
important. [Young professionals] need to know how to show up and represent yourself
and know who you are and what matters and what doesn’t in a job.”

Celebrating Emerging Innovators

PIN 2026 Class of Emerging Innovators

In July, PIN celebrated the work of 139 PIN Summer Interns, the culmination of a year of
work by PIN Fellows, and the kickoff of the next cohort of Fellows at its Emerging
Innovators event. The event, hosted by KSU, included welcome addresses from KSU
Executive Vice President of Research Karin Scarpinato and EI 2 Associate Vice
President of Community-based Engagement Programs Donna Ennis.

Keynote speaker Cayanna Good, deputy commissioner for innovation and impact for
the Technical College System of Georgia, set the tone for event with her talk about the
importance of staying curious and how that leads to innovation that can change lives
and communities.

“Programs like this don’t just hand you a line on a resume,” Good said. “They hand you
proof, proof that when smart people commit to a community, things change for the
better; proof that innovation isn’t something that we just say in Georgia, it’s something
that we do. You are now part of that proof, and that does not end today. It travels with
you.”

A panel on the future of work and a poster showcase of the work of Fellows and Interns
capped the event.

“This event reminds me of why we do the work we do,” Rivers said. “I’m able to look out
at interns, fellows, and project leaders and see future founders, future funders,
educators, researchers, nonprofit leaders, public servants, and most of all, innovators.”

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