DBHDS Summer Internship Academy

The Summer Internship Academy is a 12-week, paid internship program with opportunities in multiple offices at the DBHDS Central Office location in Richmond, VA. This internship program provides students with hands-on experience in Virginia’s public behavioral health and developmental services system through meaningful projects, professional development opportunities, mentorship, and collaboration across the agency.

This program offers:

Learning opportunities
Professional development
Leaders’ Labs
Site visits
Final Presentations
Mentorship

Applications open at the end of the year.

Hear from Past Interns

DBHDS Summer Internship Academy 2

DBHDS Summer Intern Academy

This internship was in my opinion, one of the best ways for me personally to have kicked off my career in Public Service. I have gained lots of valuable knowledge and skills throughout this internship!

Intern in Cohort 1

Loved this experience. This was the largest single period of learning I have ever gone through. Truly, I learned more this summer then I did in a semester of school.

Intern in Cohort 1

This was one of the best experiences I have had in my life and will definitely use the skills and lessons I learned for my future endeavors.

Intern in Cohort 1

I just want to take a minute to say how thankful I was for this opportunity to work for DBHDS. I came into this internship with not much experience in this area; however everyone that I interacted with made me feel comfortable and really pushed me to learn and get out of my comfort zone such as making phone calls to providers. This was an experiential learning internship and by the end of my time here, I was doing all of the work independently and left feeling confident in what I have learned.

Intern in Cohort 2

I’ve had such a wonderful experience at DBHDS, and I’m forever thankful to them for letting me experience everything about working in state government—from attending Senate hearings to writing press releases.

Samuel Shibu, Cohort 3