By Aurora Martínez, B.S. Journalism 2023

Landing a summer internship with NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises in Miami was the result of a chain reaction for Sofia Sueiras, a Media Production, Management, and Technology (MPMT) senior.

As part of her “Understanding Audiences” class taught by MPMT Associate Professor Amy Jo Coffey, Sueiras was assigned to interview a media practitioner. The project was simple: Reach out to someone you’re interested in, get to learn about their experiences, write a report about it. Sueiras had the right person in mind: Claudia Chagui, Telemundo’s senior vice president of marketing and creative.

Chagui is the mother of one of her younger brother’s soccer friends, and Sueiras said she had heard about her job and thought what she did sounded fascinating. The class assignment pushed her to reach out.

Sueiras interviewed Chagui over Zoom in fall 2021. The conversation led to a suggestion by Chagui to look into the NBCUniversal summer internship program. She listened, prepared and applied for a marketing strategy internship in January 2022.

“Without the class project, I would have never gotten the internship because that really is what made me stand out to the head of that department,” Sueiras said.

In the process of applying, Sueiras said it was important for her to do the right amount of research and be genuine with her intentions. “They just want to know who you are,” she said.

She joined NBCUniversal in summer 2022. Her position was remote most of the time, but Miami is her home and on occasions she worked on tasks that required her to be in person at the Telemundo Center, where most shows are filmed, including Hoy Día, Al Rojo Vivo, En Casa con Telemundo and La Mesa Caliente.

Some of the marketing strategy projects Sueiras worked on included the FIFA World Cup, the “Minions” movie and Premios Tu Música Urbano, a major music event held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. “Even though we were at the Telemundo Center in Miami,” Sueiras said, “we were behind the scenes posting on their social media profiles.”

Though she started college as a PaCE student amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the remote aspect of her internship was nothing like what she had experienced previously. During her internship she felt engaged, supported and inspired by her team. Sueiras was in a department that also had UF alumni, which gave her comfort and more confidence that she could also do a good job.

Now Sueiras has started her last year as an undergraduate student and is in the process of applying to law school. Inspired by her experience at NBCUniversal and the fulfilling experience she has had at UF, she said she would love to represent or serve as an in-house counsel for a big media company in the future.

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