Adobe Internships to address equity for HBCU & HSI athletes

July 1, 2022 

Adobe, a global leader in digital marketing and creative software, has launched a new micro internship program focused on student-athletes attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the US. The Student-Athlete Micro Internship (SAMI) program looks to provide career growth opportunities to underrepresented student-athletes. 

Internships help with professional skill development, personal network building and typically increase access to career opportunities. However, according to a 2020 NACE study, students of color are less likely than their white peers to receive paid internships. Black and Latinx students account for less than 16% of paid internships and roughly 17% of unpaid internships, despite making up a significant percentage of the candidates in the internship pool. 

The SAMI was specifically designed to counter this with a targeted focus on students committed to sports. Adobe’s reasoning is that student athletes often forgo internships to focus on training and other intensive demands of college athletics, which can then negatively impact their ability to find a job once they graduate. 

“Recent research from the National Association of Colleges and Employers showed that one in five student-athletes said that their athletic obligations prevented them from pursuing internship opportunities,” Adobe said. “While we’ve seen some colleges and universities help connect their student-athletes with internship opportunities, we recognized that the same type of support simply does not exist for many HBCUs and HSIs.” 

Micro internships are short-term, paid, professional assignments similar to those given to new hires or interns. The SAMI will help its interns to balance their athletic and professional aspirations with compressed schedules to accommodate training regimens and run for five weeks with four-hour workdays. “SAMI has been designed with student athletes’ demanding training schedules in mind and will allow them to showcase many of their transferable skills from the sports field in a corporate environment,” Adobe said. 

This venture is another step to help bridge the opportunity gap for student athletes and represents an extension of Adobe’s previous partnerships with HBCUs and HSIs announced late last year. According to Fortune, in response to the social injustice protests that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, Adobe leadership crafted the Taking Action Initiative (TAI), aimed at creating better representation and improved development and growth opportunities for the company’s Black employees. “There’s an inseparable link—I’d even say an intimate connection—between how we develop and how we grow talent coupled with our diversity and inclusion efforts,” said Brian Miller, Adobe’s chief talent, diversity, and inclusion officer. 

The company has donated $1 million each to Bowie State University, Winston-Salem State University and San Jose University to provide students with training, career readiness, financial assistance and digital tools to fuel their professional careers. Additionally, Adobe provided 100 annual scholarships of up to $15,000 each to students of color to prepare them for future careers in the tech industry. 

“In order to create products that solve challenging problems for people all over the world, companies need to hire employees who can bring diverse perspectives and life experiences. We’re committed to growing the talent pipeline by providing career opportunities to underrepresented and underserved students,” said Adobe. 

The creative software company hopes to provide athletes with professional development and networking opportunities. They see the SAMI program as a vital part of their efforts to increase minority representation at Adobe and erase systematic inequalities. 

Source: Forbes