This fall semester, I was grateful to work for Restore More through the Social Impact Fellowship as a Marketing and Communications Intern. Restore More is an educational consulting firm focused on implementing restorative practices in schools, school districts, and recently even children’s healthcare centers. Providing resources and workshops, the company is focused on pillars such as anti-racism, social-emotional learning, and teacher wellness. Many of their consultants were former educators and spread a positive environment using tools for situations like conflict resolution.
From the second Claudine Miles (CEO of Restore More) reached out to me, I knew this internship would be a perfect fit. Throughout our interview, I was already brainstorming ideas for the company’s social media. I had come prepared by researching the brand, and I had already fallen in love with their mission. As someone who was initially interested in going into teaching, I was excited to have the chance to contribute to something education-related with my marketing knowledge. Claudine made me feel so welcome and important every step of the way.
The main goal of this internship was to revamp Restore More’s social media through Instagram. Posting was not very consistent, so we wanted to re-engage the current community and following of the page, while keeping previous brand alignment. Content creation wasn’t too new to me, but this was my first applied experience creating content for a company. Through weekly zoom meetings, I worked with Claudine to come up with new ideas to bring more awareness to the page. One of my main ideas was to create more Reel-based content, as I gathered from my research and insight into Instagram Analytics.
For all content, Canva was my main tool. It was somewhat of a learning curve to align aesthetics to an established brand guide. In order to do this, I really had to immerse myself in the brand culture. I learned a lot through the process, and my content reflected that growth. For example, one post I made about accessibility, synthesizing a blog published to the website, carried over to all future posts. Any video content was published with captions, which aligned with the overarching message of community care. For short-form videos, I worked with Claudine to come up with content ideas; she would send me some raw videos, and I would edit them with captions, music, and any other necessary elements. I was thankful to have such a great dynamic where I was able to bounce ideas off freely.
Another post series I brought to the Instagram was workshop recaps. I really wanted to show the wonderful behind-the-scenes work of the company in action. I created posts styled like lesson plans to bring sessions to life with visuals. Claudine often had pictures and videos of her sessions in her camera roll, but with this style of post she was actually able to share them in a way that others could learn from. This also gave potential clients a good idea of the company’s services.
In terms of improvements and insights, engagement definitely skyrocketed with the new content strategies. Followers that weren’t usually active began commenting and expressed that they loved the personal connection when a real human face was on their screen. There were even brand-new connections formed through Instagram. For example, there were invitations to speaker events in the Atlanta area, further increasing awareness of the brand to like-minded people who truly cared about wellness and education.
Overall, I loved my experience working with Restore More. I learned so many important skills that will easily transfer to any future roles. As a marketing concentration, I would love to continue with content creation, but this position taught me that it is really important to connect with a brand’s message first. From there, it’s much easier to amplify that brand’s voice.
A huge thank you again to Claudine Miles and the team at the Georgia Tech Institute for Leadership and Social Impact for arranging this fellowship and creating such a positive environment to learn.
This reflection is part of Georgia Tech’s Social Impact Fellows program, offered through the Institute for Leadership and Social Impact (ILSI). This program connects students with nonprofit and community organizations in Atlanta for semester-long, hands-on project experiences designed to foster co-learning, social responsibility, and personal growth. To learn more about program details and application information, please visit our program webpage.