For three Texas A&M University-San Antonio marketing students, internships have offered more than a way to boost their résumé. They have provided opportunities to tackle real business challenges, connect with communities, and discover the careers they want to pursue.
Recent marketing graduates Karina Lyssy and Serenity Gill and senior Carolina Coutiño have each gained professional experience with nationally recognized companies. Karina completed two internships with H-E-B, Serenity is gaining community relations experience with Yelp, and Carolina is working for Zipline, the drone-delivery technology company.
Their experiences reflect the opportunities available to A&M-San Antonio students willing to pursue them, said Roberto Saldivar, assistant professor of marketing.
“We try to create as many opportunities as we can,” Saldivar said.
While the marketing program provides students with a foundation and helps develop relationships with companies, Saldivar said the students themselves played an important role in securing their internships.
“They were the ones reaching out to different companies,” he said. “We set the foundation and they took advantage of every single opportunity that we gave them.”
Karina’s relationship with H-E-B began long before her internship.
She started working for the San Antonio-based grocery retailer in 2022, during her freshman year at A&M-San Antonio. Over the next four years, she worked as a service lead, overseeing cashiers and customer service assistants while also helping with operations.
That experience led to two summer internships with H-E-B, the first in 2024 and the second in 2026, both designed to help her gain managerial experience.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in May, Karina completed her most recent internship as a store operations intern at H-E-B’s Brooks City Base location.
The 10-week program was unlike the stereotypical internship. Rather than being assigned routine tasks, interns were given a real business problem H-E-B was trying to solve.
Karina and two other interns were tasked with identifying where facility expenses were coming from and finding ways to reduce or eliminate repair and maintenance costs.
Each intern worked from a different H-E-B location, with Karina on the South Side. They worked independently at their respective stores before coming together each week to share findings and collaborate on solutions.
“It’s a really unique experience because we’re not doing busy work or getting coffee,” Karina said. “We’re actually working on real-world situations that H-E-B wants an extra hand or new set of eyes on.”
Her experience at A&M-San Antonio helped prepare her for the demands of the internship, she said. Balancing school, work and family taught her time management, accountability and how to collaborate with people from different backgrounds.
Now back at her H-E-B store in Floresville, Karina is preparing for her next career step. She hopes to build a lifelong career with the company, with the goal of eventually running her own store.
“I plan on spending my whole career with them,” said Karina, adding that she hopes to return to A&M-San Antonio in the next year or two to pursue an MBA.
For Serenity, an internship with Yelp has provided an opportunity to put her marketing skills to work in the San Antonio community.
Serenity, who previously served as student body president, graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. She began her Yelp community relations internship in August after learning about the opportunity through the University’s marketing club.
Now, she works remotely with Yelp, meeting with her community manager in person once a week.
Her work focuses on highlighting local San Antonio businesses, promoting community events, and providing media coverage for businesses that are opening.
As a community relations intern, Serenity has gained experience in content creation, event planning, social media and community outreach.
“It’s teaching me a lot about how content creation works and collaborating with others to plan events,” she said.
The experience has been especially valuable because the local Yelp team is small. Serenity and her community manager handle much of the social media work and outreach themselves.
Her initial internship has now been extended for another six months, taking her through next summer, with the potential for a full-time opportunity afterward.
“I’ve been loving this job,” she said. “It’s been a blast so far.”
Serentiy is also building toward an entrepreneurial goal. She recently began working with a client to gain experience running her own marketing operation and hopes to launch a marketing agency focused on clients in the beauty, restaurant and food-service industries.
She is also considering returning to A&M-San Antonio for a master’s degree.
Carolina’s internship took her into an emerging area of technology.
A marketing major scheduled to graduate in December, she began her internship with Zipline in May. The company uses autonomous drones to deliver products, including medical supplies and consumer goods.
Carolina spent the summer in Dallas, where Zipline has established a network of drone-delivery sites. Her role was community engagement, helping the company build relationships in communities where it operates or plans to operate.
That work involves schools, community organizations, senior centers, police and fire departments and other groups. Carolina said the goal is not simply to introduce people to the technology, but to show how drone delivery can address practical needs.
For example, she has worked on outreach to senior centers, where she hopes to demonstrate how residents can use the technology and order deliveries through their phones. She has also worked with organizations whose employees may benefit from delivery because they cannot easily leave their workplaces.
Her previous experience at A&M-San Antonio helped prepare her for the role. She served as the marketing supervisor for Recreational Sports for about two years, gaining experience in social media, event marketing and community engagement.
After researching and applying for internships at several companies, she received multiple offers, including from Zipline, Caterpillar and Paccar.
“I chose Zipline because I really like their culture,” she said. “They treat their employees and interns very well.”
Although her summer internship in Dallas ended in August, Zipline offered Caolina the opportunity to continue working remotely from San Antonio while she completes her final semester.
The experience has also helped her clarify her career goals. She now knows she wants to pursue a career in community engagement.
“I’ve kind of realized the route I want to take for sure,” she said. “That’s one of the really positive things that I’ve gotten from this—I know what I want to do now.”
Saldivar said he’s proud of how his students are gaining experience that extends well beyond the classroom. “They’ve seized opportunities to apply their skills in the professional world while discovering where they want to go next,” he said. “It’s so encouraging to see our students working towards their futures and starting to realize their dreams.”