Natalie: The Life and Times of a Non-Traditional Daebak Global Intern Alumni

I can’t describe the feeling of being able to rant about K-Pop and K-Dramas through an internship position at the same time! This bubbly and exciting feeling of expressing a large piece of myself to an audience that will appreciate and understand your feelings is something that can’t be described with words. My journey of how I became an intern with this company is a long, but exciting one; Coming from a non-traditional and non-target school. As long as you are passionate, stay true to yourself, stay driven, and the roads that will open up are endless!

Scanning through the list of startups at Berkeley's SkyDeck’s Fall 2021 Intern Recruiting Fair, I had made a list of all the companies I wanted to possibly intern for. I individually emailed around nine different startups and got interviews for more than ¾ of them. Going through all the interviews and exceptions, I immediately knew who I wanted to be an intern for; Which was The Daebak Company. When writing my email, I had recalled actually following the company back when they first launched in 2019 by email subscriptions. What differentiates them from all the other companies is that this startup had a defined description and program for interns; Whereas all the others didn't have a specific plan. Since the major that I study is difficult, I didn't want to put any unnecessary pressure on myself by having an internship that is not structured and was not accommodating. 

When I got accepted into the program and received my introductory email, I was amazed at the cute welcome card and introductory video I received from Jenna Tokioka, the Global Internship Manager. One of my favorite things to do is creative writing, so when I was given a prompt for an article, I really enjoyed brainstorming ideas on how to portray the concept in a fun, but professional manner. My favorite one was my last article, which was about the top artists I would recommend. I also loved making a list of ideas of influencers to partner with, along with community engagement building techniques. Of course, my most favorite assignment of all was producing video content for the two free Daebak Boxes we received! Around campus, I actually got so many compliments of the Esther Bunny Call Me Baby Water Bottle that I received in the Esther Bunny box. 

The most interesting assignment that I had to be the most creative with was when I was assigned to create a game for Daebak Magazine. I had accidentally made a list of drinking games because they were the only ones I saw in K-Dramas, but then I was directed to other types of Korean games I wasn’t aware of. I did an E-sports guessing game and found out that most of the audience may not be interested in that topic. I was given a detailed description of other types of Korean games to use instead, that I also wasn’t aware of. I had used a guessing game with traditional Korean games for the final product, and through this experience, I learned I should have asked more questions instead of just assuming. 

The biggest benefit from the internship for me was being able to work with a global team that is based outside of the United States. I try to shape my whole personal brand on being a global citizen, so this internship definitely fit this category and helped to diversify my job experience. I have been a Korean Culture fan for many years, so it was nice to have an outlet to express myself with something that is a huge part of my personality. My overall reason for having an internship outside of my major is because I love marketing and would like to have multiple jobs in the future in different fields. Since I do engineering, this internship was mainly a free place to use and improve my creativity, which is extremely limited inside of school. Lastly, of course, who doesn’t like free stuff! I wasn’t aware that we were going to actually get Daebak Boxes shipped in for all the interns and it was an amazing surprise!

Overall, my experiences that I had at The Daebak Company has positively shaped my job experience and helped me to identify exactly what I want in a company in the future. I would recommend this internship, especially for newbies that haven’t had much experience, but are passionate about Korean Culture.

Written by Natalie