Zito’s participants in PA State/Local Internship Program 2018 (PA SLIP). L to R: Matthew Ketchner, Kevin Johnson, Jami Stuckey, Rocco Pompa.

Zito Media participated in a Summer Intern program through Workforce Solutions for North Central PA, which allowed local undergrads from around the area to work in Coudersport and apply their skills in a “real-world” work environment at the Zito Corporate Headquarters.  The program supports the youth in our region to enable more undergrads to connect with local employers as well as give back to their communities.

“We are so excited to see companies like Zito value the work of our young people and be part of a movement to retain them in our region.  With a positive work experience, our youth will see the opportunities throughout our region and hopefully will want to stay,” stated the Executive Director of Workforce Solutions, Susie Snelick.

The four undergrads pictured assisted with projects, including extensive market research, applying new standardizations, analyzing usage data, assisting with server administration, as well as IT projects specific to the Zito HQ building.

SLIP Participants

Among these interns was Rocco Pompa, attending school at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford for a BS in Computer Information Systems & Technology, who came to Zito to further his Information Technology skills.  Rocco helped Zito’s IT crew audit and updated Zito’s system-wide PCs and update the Zito Corporate Domain.  Not only did he help with his assigned tasks, but assisted with troubleshooting and other daily tasks that arose in the process.

Jami Stuckey, in the Commercial Sales Department, is attending The University of Pittsburgh Main Campus in the fall of 2018.  Jami played a key role in analyzing, reformatting and applying these new standards to existing data.   The areas of focus included; Business Partners, Contracts, and Invoicing. She also worked analyzing and populating a new Master Location List.  This involved researching thousands of addresses, researching GPS coordinates and CLLI codes and then creating a master list from that information.

Kevin Johnson supported the Zito Commercial Voice Services Department and is attending Clarion University as an English Major with an emphasis on writing.  He worked on projects that included analyzing usage data to determine utilization, margins and least cost routing.

Matthew Ketchner worked in the Zito Commercial Voice Services Technical Group and attending The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford for a BS in Computer Information Systems & Technology. During his internship, he worked on server administration and helped to develop a source code and version control tracker.

While their positions weren’t all directly related to their fields, they were all able to apply their unique skills and learned knowledge to gain a first-hand perspective on business practices.  Their internship at Zito helped them see how their abilities can be applied in different ways within a company.  Working directly under mentors, they were coached about the working environment, business practices, and the essentials of working as a team in order to provide quality products and services to customers; all skills that are valuable no matter where their futures take them.

This program was made possible with funding from Workforce Solutions for North Central PA and the PA Department of Labor and Industry.  The program allowed Zito to employ more interns in 2018 than in previous years to give back to the community and help our local young adults gain a well-rounded understanding of the working world.  Their contributions at Zito provided valuable research and solutions that they should be proud to have accomplished.

It Didn’t Stop There

In addition to the state-funded Intern Program, we had several additional local students who joined Zito to assist with various projects as well.  Eli Trimbur, studying at Wheaton College, assisted with a regression analysis on all of Zito’s current locations to see how different variables affect the success of each location, while David Rigas, coming from Middlebury College, collaborated with a potential acquisition model.  Savannah Gray, attending Edinboro University, helped the Marketing team welcome new customers and delivered marketing material to new locations.  Phillip Lauer, attending the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, assisted the Accounting Department on a large electricity project.  Michael Lauer, also attending the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, worked aside fellow intern, Rocco Pompa, in IT to help audit, inventory, and update Zito’s switches, servers, email platforms, and much more at the HQ building.

Zito had a total of 9 interns this year in 2018, and each of these talented minds played a valuable role in their department and worked collaboratively with their teams to accomplish their goals.  We wish them all the best in their future adventures and thank them for their time spent at Zito Headquarters this summer!