In the summer of 2023, junior Max Lepore had the opportunity to work as an intern in Sen. Mike Lee’s office in Washington D.C. This role included answering phones, writing emails and even having the occasional lunch with Lee. But Lepore’s favorite part of the experience? Giving tours.
“We’d give tours to a wide variety of people, lots of different people from different backgrounds,” he said. “And that’s my favorite thing, is just meeting different people.”
Lepore, a political science major, told the story of one tour in particular when he showed around a teenage girl who had been saving up to afford a trip to D.C.
“It was kind of cool to give her that experience, and that was definitely a tour I tried to tell as many stories as I could, not rush it at all,” he said. “Things like that were just cool, giving people those experiences.”
Lepore’s internship under Lee was through the Hinckley Institute of Politics, which offers a wide variety of local, national and global internships to students at the University of Utah. This semester, Lepore is doing another Hinckley internship — his fourth total with the institute — in Gov. Spencer Cox’s office.
His role there is as a legal research and analysis fellow, where he works with Cox’s general counsel team doing legal research and tracking and summarizing bills throughout this year’s legislative session.
“That was really cool, knowing that when I’m looking at these bills, when I’m summarizing, when I’m analyzing them, giving them my absolute full effort to be able to present them to the governor — I think that helps him make the best decisions on whether to sign these bills,” he said. “I think that helps Utahns know that we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that we are seeking those solutions, and we are doing our full due diligence on everything.”
Lepore first heard about the Hinckley Institute in his freshman year, when he was still a business major. He said he was intimidated at first, given his lack of professional experience, but after hearing about some of his friends’ experiences, he decided to get involved.
Through his work for the institute, Lepore said he discovered his love for politics, more specifically, public service, “when you know everything that you’re doing is for the betterment of people.”
“It’s definitely a difference when people are doing this job and that’s the whole point — to create better situations, better lives, healthier lives, more safe lives, for Utahns,” he said. “Whereas, for any sort of company, you have a product and a lot of times you might be using that to try to improve the lives of others, but the ultimate goal is financial gain.”
His involvement over the last three years has included more than his internships as well — he’s also worked on the editorial board for the Hinckley Journal of Politics, and his campaign management minor is directly through the institute as well.
“The great thing about Hinckley is that I think it’s a lot more than internships and people don’t necessarily realize that,” he said.
Lepore added he is an example of the “most common type of Hinckley student,” but that the institute is “not purely for political science students.”
“A lot of people who do political science are definitely drawn to the Hinckley Institute just because they have a lot of connections with different political groups all over … but I’ve also met a lot of people with really unique backgrounds or majors or things they’re interested in and they’ve been able to do some cool things through Hinckley,” he said.
Lepore’s roommate in D.C. was another Hinckley intern who was majoring in economics and had the opportunity to intern with the National Head Start Association, which specializes in early childhood development and education. He had another friend majoring in recreational therapy who was able to get an internship in her field through Hinckley.
“Those things are definitely different from the classic working at the Capitol, working for a lobbyist group, stuff like that,” Lepore said. “There are definitely opportunities out there.”
He added he believes the Hinckley Institute is at least partially responsible for opportunities the U as a whole, and the state of Utah, get as well.
“For Utah, we had a vice presidential debate here, of course, in 2020, and now we’re gonna have a presidential debate here in 2024,” he said. “I think the Hinckley Institute is involved in a lot of those different things and making those happen.”
Max Lepore formerly wrote for the Daily Utah Chronicle, but in this story is speaking in his role as a Hinckley intern and not as a member of U Student Media.
