Welcome to Industrial Road!

As I walked into the Vera Bradley Industrial Road office, I knew this internship was a match made in heaven! I was greeted by smiling faces and cheery desks, each one decked out in Vera Bradley office items. My mental Vera Bradley wish list kept growing and growing as I passed each bulletin board, notebook, and folder!

Human Resources started the day (and summer internship program) by gathering the interns for the morning and introducing us to each other, the company, and the program. It’s absolutely amazing to see how far Vera Bradley has come since the beginning! Watching video clips of co-founders Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia R. Miller explaining their vision and goals was just the inspiration we needed to kick-start our summer.

After learning about the company, we took a tour of the office. Seeing the photo set, where the product pictures are taken, made me feel like a true Vera Bradley insider. I had to pinch myself that yes… I really am where the magic happens!

I had a bit of a pleasant surprise on my first day: although the offices, products, and girl power messages are undeniably girly, there are quite a few Vera Bradley male employees! Just in the intern program, 9 interns out of the 16 total are guys working in the business services (finance and accounting) and information technology departments.

Seeing the guys here made me think of new criteria for my future husband: he must be able to name the colors of the latest Vera Bradley collection!

The Summer of {Vera Bradley} Love

Hi! I am Libby Bates, and I'm the Web/Retail Marketing intern at Vera Bradley. It's pretty safe to say I've landed my dream internship--I can't think of anything better than a job that combines Vera Bradley, shopping, and surfing the Web!

A little bit about me: I'm an Indiana girl--my home base is in Lawrenceburg and I'm a senior marketing major at Butler University in Indianapolis. Although I've lived, worked, and played in Indiana my whole life, I spent last semester studying abroad in Madrid, Spain. I had a blast living with a "senora" and traveling on the weekend, but was ready to return stateside and start my internship at Vera Bradley. Almost as soon as my plane landed, I repacked my bags, grabbed my new Garmin GPS (a necessity for uncharted territory!), and headed for my summer housing in Fort Wayne... happy to be back to my Hoosier roots!

In this blog, I'll be posting about my summer as a Vera Bradley intern. Sit back and enjoy--and feel free to shop Vera Bradley in between my posts :)