Former Student Spotlight - Haley Himmelspach
When Haley (Coffield) Himmelspach applied for the internship with the U.S. Commercial Service – North Dakota (CS), she had no idea where her experience would lead her. A native of a very small town along the Minnesota/Canada border, she attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota majoring in Business Administration with an emphasis in Economics. Originally, after watching too many Law and Order episodes and reading too many John Grisham novels, she thought she wanted to go to law school. When a friend referred her to the internship, she was intrigued, but she had not thought about international business or working for the government in any capacity. After a few months with the CS North Dakota office, which included meeting with clients and going to a few conferences, Haley realized there were a lot of interesting opportunities that she hadn’t considered because she just didn’t know about them. She shifted her career goals towards something international.
After graduating, she started with Douglas Scientific as an Import/Export Coordinator in the Logistics Department. She researched export regulations and provided recommendations for standard procedures and worked in the shipping department. This gave her some more exposure to the regulatory side, which she found really interesting, but more valuable in the long run was the exposure to business operations: shipping, receiving, inventory management, and working with other departments. During this time, Haley decided to enroll in North Dakota State University’s Master’s in International Agribusiness program. She decided to return to CS North Dakota as a graduate assistant where she worked closely with the newly created Rural Export Center. As someone who grew up in a small, rural town with a public high school class of 14 students, Haley had first-hand experience with rural needs, and a passion to work with rural companies.
Near the end of her graduate program, Haley started applying for jobs with different international businesses. She accepted a role with the Rural Export Center in May of 2021 about two weeks before defending her graduate thesis.
With the REC, she worked on the front end of the research process for the most part: taking notes or leading intro calls, drafting proposals, being the POC for clients and Trade Specialists if they had questions about their projects, etc. She did a little bit of research as well. She liked the research because she was always learning something fascinating. She also liked potential partner lists because it was like a game to see how many good partners could be found and it taught her to think outside the box to find new and better partners. Many of the other parts of her role (website, newsletter) were fun creative outlets.
Her experience working at the Rural Export Center helped her obtain a position with Aldevron. Today, as a Legal and Compliance Generalist, she works with internal clients to screen and applies for export licenses. In addition to actually applying for the license, she keeps track of how much has been used and if the company needs to apply for new ones.
During her time with CS North Dakota and the Rural Export Export Center, she was exposed to very senior management in dozens of companies of all sizes from all around the country. She saw firsthand how companies develop their strategies and the rationale behind those decisions. It was a great opportunity for her to network and learn about the companies in the Minnesota/North Dakota area.
The most important skills she learned with the REC were time and project management. At her current job, she has to be the driver behind most of the project and she is not afraid to push a bit for an answer when she is waiting on a response. She credits the REC leadership for teaching her how to politely follow up with clients.
She would tell people interested in the CS internship to be open to new experiences. The CS internship can lead to a career in many fields – government, sales, marketing, and many more!