Colorado Trout Unlimited is excited to welcome Rachel Willis and Jeff Florence onto our team for the summer. The two of them will be working closely with staff, chapters, members and volunteers to help us make a bigger impact for the rivers in Colorado. We were fortunate enough to hire two very qualified people for two different positions. Below are a short bio and brief description about what they will be doing during their time with CTU.
River Cleanup Intern
Rachel Willis rachel.willis@coloradotu.org
Rachel has been
hired on as our River Cleanup Intern for the summer. Rachel is originally from Alaska and grew up spending her summers fishing with her dad on the Chena River or down south in Valdez. Rachel is an Environmental Science major with a concentration in ecological restoration at Metropolitan State University of Denver. While at Metro she served as the Vice President for the Colorado Wildlife Federations student club. She is excited to work with Colorado Trout Unlimited on River Cleanup projects and to learn about river conservation in Colorado. Rachel is looking forward to being involved in conservation efforts in beautiful Colorado and to starting her career working for TU.
Rachel’s internship has two main objectives. The first is to help with planning the many river cleanups that our chapters do across the state. The main focus will be on recruiting new volunteers and helping to develop follow-up strategies for engaging those volunteers beyond river cleanups. She will edit and populate the Great Colorado River Cleanup website with all of the cleanup dates to help recruit volunteers across the state. She will also help with planning prior to the day of river cleanups and help to find materials, develop partnerships, and make calls for cleanups.
The second part of Rachel’s internship is to help CTU develop and manage a volunteer database within our SALSA software. This will include a lot of data entry as well and organizing volunteers by geographic area as well as area of interest for volunteer activities. This will help all of us in the future be able to utilize volunteers at the click of a mouse to help with projects.
Communications Intern
Jeff Florence jeff.florence@coloradotu.org
Jeff has been hired on as our Communications Intern for the summer. Jeff was born and raised in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. From an early age Jeff has been camping, hiking and fishing in his free time and he also played hockey and baseball growing up. Jeff is currently studying journalism with a minor in recreation services at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He hopes to one day write for an outdoor magazine and has done some free lance writing for Cabela’s in the past. Jeff is looking forward to getting to work for Trout Unlimited and help spread the story of a great organization while gaining experience in both journalism and recreation services.
Because of Jeff’s experience with other recreation activities he will focus his work on writing stories about how TU can reach out and partner/work with other recreation industries such as rafting, camping, hunting etc. Jeff will also be working with TU chapters and staff to help tell our success stories and network those stories through our various online sources. Jeff will also be developing a TU Chapter Guide to Social Media for those chapters that are looking to learn more about social media best practices and expand their social media presence. We hope that Jeff will be able to take our online presence to a new level and help to increase our relationships with not only the fishing community in CO but to the other recreation industries as well.
