An internship turned contract
Starting in December of 2020, I began an internship with Global Children School as an amateur web developer. I worked closely with the CEO, Tatyana Basile, to redesign and redevelop the school’s WordPress website. This was my first role out of college, and while it was a challenge, it was one I felt prepared to take on.
At the start, getting comfortable with WordPress took some adjustment. I was used to building static HTML files and working more directly with front end structure, so learning how WordPress themes, PHP templates, widgets, and stylesheets fit together was a shift in mindset. The interface felt unintuitive at first, and it took time to understand where styles lived, how content was being injected into templates, and how to work cleanly within an existing CMS rather than around it.
After a few months of hands on work, I developed a solid understanding of how WordPress functions under the hood. I became comfortable making structural changes, adjusting layouts, and implementing design updates in a way that respected the platform while still allowing for flexibility and customization.
Alongside the web work, I received a crash course in Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud tools, including Illustrator. I had an art background going into the role, but this was my first time applying it in a professional design and marketing context. During the internship, I produced a large volume of digital content, including a full brochure for the school, a logo design for a new website that had not yet launched, wireframes for that site, a large format backdrop for a graduation ceremony, and multiple digital assets used across the website.
At the end of the internship period, I was brought on as a contractor for a short engagement to finish implementing the redesign. That extension gave me the opportunity to see a project through to completion and to apply what I had learned in a more independent capacity.
While the site has since been updated, several of the structural and design changes I implemented are still in place. Overall, the experience gave me a strong foundation in working with WordPress, collaborating directly with a CEO, and balancing design, development, and real world constraints early in my career.
Global Children School