News and Knowledge

In February, OAR welcomed two interns to its offices. Clark Hilliard, a graduate of Monmouth College in Illinois, will be at OAR through May, and Katherine Rios, currently a senior at George Mason University in Virginia, is an OAR veteran, having worked as an intern at OAR last spring. Kat, as she is known, returned, she says, because she loved it so much. Like Hilliard’s, her internship will extend into May.

Hilliard explains that his primary motivation for seeking an internship with OAR was personal. “As a person with Asperger Syndrome, I am personally invested in OAR’s work as ultimately it will affect me and those like me. While I am quite high functioning, autism still affects my daily life and the opportunity to help an organization which aims to assist those like me was quite tempting,” Hilliard explains.

He hopes to gain work experience during his internship so that he can build up his resume. Having majored in political science and the classics, he is trying to find a career that he finds enjoyable and fulfilling that will also enable him to establish his independence. Hilliard notes that he has been able to work on a number of projects so far, from analyzing Facebook statistics and entering data to writing articles for the newsletter and communicating with autism organizations in other countries.

Rios says her internship will include work on a number of projects. Currently, she is working on OAR’s Autism Awareness Month outreach as she did last year, to help OAR reach its goals of distributing the Kit for Kids to 150 schools across the United States and internationally. Her assignment also includes organizing and analyzing feedback for the Kits for Kids Autism Tuned-In Web site soon to be tested and launched and helping with OAR’s social media and communications.

She will graduate in May and hopes to “find a job as welcoming as OAR has been and that has a heart for serving the community.”