During the summer of 2020, Cecelia Poehlman started with COLSA as a summer intern in the Cyber and Information Warfare (CIW) Department. She was the intern team’s technical writer, which was something she had never done before but absolutely loved. After interning for two summers in a row, Cecelia’s name ended up in the proposal department. This past summer she made the transition from technical CIW writer to proposal writer and was hired on to work full-time. 

Cecelia said that during her time at COLSA she has learned that the “culture is centered around having good people.” She went on and said that “COLSA actively tried to ensure that every person who enters this building leaves a better person.” 

Cecelia says this is part of why she enjoys working at COLSA: “I picked the college I went to [Mercer University] for a similar reason—the people there and here are really invested in making their corner of the world a better place.” In her first few months of full-time work, COLSA held several internal fundraisers and supported employee efforts at various charity efforts such as the Liz Hurley Ribbon Run, blood drives, and Habitat for Humanity. She finds that places with a culture like this push their inhabitants to constantly improve, and she has seen this in her own skillset.