TOMS SHOES LOGO

Once upon a budding social movement fourteen newbies stumbled into a beautiful summer adventure....

Hey, TOMS fans! I’m Chelsea, one of fourteen interns that just stepped into a great big pile of wonderful that is TOMS. Obviously this goes without saying, but I have to put it out there as we pinch ourselves from our new desks, we are SO pumped to be part of the TOMS family!

The shoes suspended from the ceiling, pictures of the One for One initiatives and “GIVE” displays made of shoes greeted us last Thursday, when we marched into HQ with wide eyes and big ambitions, and now we’re fully immersed in it all, loving that you guys are keeping TOMS so busy.

Though intern orientation presented us with a whole heap of info, I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version of a theme that kept finding its way into the day: storytelling. We all know (and hope you do, too) that every TOMS story plays an huge role in the ongoing TOMS saga, so I thought I’d introduce intern story time. So, without further ado...

(Back row, L to R) Brian, Merissa, Erin (hiding), Jake, James and Julia; (Middle) Lizzy, Melanie, Nicole, Jina, Micah, Tobi and Jessie; (Bottom) Amanda, Avery, Dominique and Me (Chelsea)

Chapter 1: What are YOU doing here?

A brisk air wafted in as two car-fulls of eager youngins arrived at TOMS for their first day of work. Jina, Lizzy, James, Jake, Nicole, Merissa, Erin and Melanie make an awesome little carpool of creative visionaries. They love each other...and quite frankly, they have to- they’re roommates. 

Lizzy and Melanie are both from Michigan, and though Melanie’s Midwestern accent is subtle, Lizzy’s comes through enough for the whole geographic region! She rocks it, though.

James speaks with an accent, too, but his a little more curious. Though he grew up in Texas, he brought back a twang from Australia after studying as an exchange student there.

Nicole reps Chicago for the intern class. She’s a campus rep at The Ohio State University and made a pair of Classics with a TOMS flag that we’re all trying to get our hands on.

Jake’s from St. Louis. Last summer he volunteered in a rural Kenyan orphanage doing all sorts of jobs, from personal projects to digging rocks out of a soccer field, and now he’s one of the Giving interns. How cool?

Jina’s from Nebraska and shares a room with Lizzy...and potentially a mouse, so she checks under both beds daily. Erin’s an amazing graphic designer from North Carolina, and Merissa’s a diehard Auburn fan with an incredible creative eye.

Into HQ Avery and Dominique followed that first morning, of course rocking their TOMS. They both go to school in California and will probably have to be in charge of directions until the rest of us find our way. Dominique and I kind of share a story, having both traveled around the world for a semester while taking classes on a ship.

Then we’ve got Micah, who commutes an hour and a half to work EACH WAY; Tobi, who just moved to Santa Monica from Aspen; and the East Coasties: Brian and me. My mom moved here from Miami last summer, so I get to live between two sunny cities, and Brian’s the oldest of the bunch. He worked for 5 years in New York City after undergrad, and now he’s in grad school at Harvard.