Career Services Spotlight, Aleksander “Sasha” Kovalev, MPA Student

Published September 2026

During his internship with Verde Vida, a nonprofit combating food insecurity in NYC, MPA student Aleksander “Sasha” Kovalev gained hands-on experience in strategic communications, media relations, and community-centered advocacy.

Where did you complete your internship and what is the mission of the organization?
I completed my internship with Verde Vida, a non-profit dedicated to fighting hunger with dignity in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. The organization operates free, client-choice, and no-barrier fresh produce markets on public school grounds in Washington Heights and the Bronx, ensuring that community members access fresh, culturally relevant produce with agency, without conventional restrictions that may be found at traditional food pantry models.

What were your responsibilities in this role?
As the Media Relations and Communications Intern, my core responsibilities centered on directing external outreach and expanding organizational visibility across the New York metropolitan area. This involved building a media outreach pipeline from the ground up by researching individual journalists’ reporting histories, thematic beats, and publication mandates. Alongside broad press distributions, outreach consisted of customized narrative angles to match how individual reporters cover community systems, framing initiatives through lenses such as immigrant advocacy, urban agricultural logistics, labor, and municipal food policy. In parallel with journalistic outreach, partnership outreach engaged culinary creators, local chefs, and digital influencers to build collaborative community programming, using diverse digital channels to do so. Beyond external pipelines, other work included developing internal brand messaging guidelines, producing partnership collateral, and authoring a policy briefing deck used in direct meetings with congressional offices. This targeted approach yielded strong earned coverage, including published features in regional and Spanish-language outlets like El Diario NY and Patch, and a live morning drive radio segment on 1010 WINS (92.3 FM).

What skills, knowledge, or experiences did you gain through this opportunity?
This internship gave me applied, hands-on experience in media pipeline architecture, beat-customized narrative positioning, and public affairs data management within an agile non-profit setting. Navigating fast-paced news cycles strengthened my ability to spot angles and translate community-level work into concise pitches under tight deadlines. Also, working directly with reporters gave me practical insight into broadcast and print newsroom routines, while maintaining tracking databases reinforced how vital clean data is for organizational continuity after an internship ends. The experience also deepened my understanding of urban food systems and non-profit dynamics, and what it takes to run dignified, no-barrier mutual aid in underserved neighborhoods.

How did this internship contribute to your professional development or career goals?
Coming from the private sector, I wanted to see firsthand how a lean, mission-driven team tackles community challenges under real constraints. Building an outreach pipeline from scratch gave me a grounded understanding of how to create visibility and trust with genuine proximity to the community we served. This work also strengthened my interest in the intersection of public affairs, cross-sector collaborations, and public-private partnerships, as I learned to bridge neighborhood-level needs with institutional stakeholders. The adaptability and discipline I want to bring into future public-interest work came from having to balance operations with strategic communications day to day.

What advice do you have for current students looking for an internship?
Never underestimate the power of organic peer connections. I landed this opportunity very unexpectedly after a long semester, simply by getting dinner with classmates where we got to know each other both personally and professionally. By openly sharing my background and motivations with a peer, I was directly connected to the leadership at Verde Vida. You never know when or where an opportunity will strike, so keep your eyes peeled, build genuine relationships with the people sitting next to you in class, and be ready to serve when the right chance to do impactful work presents itself.