Thinking Globally, Recruiting Locally

Lydia Ruffin (right), then a student at the College of William & Mary, completed a summer internship with Newport News biosensor company ivWatch to help fine-tune the company’s marketing efforts, including a comprehensive brand guidebook.

When Lydia Ruffin began work as a restaurant server, her goal was to support herself through school. She could not have anticipated how profoundly that entry-level job would shape her career.

Through a series of fortunate connections, starting with a regular restaurant customer, Ruffin transitioned from serving meals to marketing cutting-edge medical devices as part of VEDP’s Virginia Global Business Internship Program (VGBIP).

VGBIP matches students enrolled in Virginia’s public colleges and universities with Virginia companies seeking assistance with their international business development. Participating businesses supervise interns while they contribute to global business projects in research, operations, and/or marketing. As internship providers, companies have the opportunity to evaluate potential future employees, advance their international business strategies, and train future Virginia global business leaders. The program also reimburses businesses for intern wages, and VEDP leads weekly global and professional education workshops for the interns that deliver training on international business domains and transferable skills.

National Association of Colleges and Employers research indicates that 80% of employers said that internships provided the best return on investment as a recruiting strategy, compared to career fairs, on-campus visits, on-campus panels, or other activities. Employees who took part in experiential learning while in college had higher rates of career satisfaction and a higher average salary than those who did not engage in experiential learning.

ivWatch, Newport News

A Fortuitous Relationship 

Brian Clare is chief medical officer and a board member at ivWatch, a biotech company based in Newport News that focuses on using optical sensors to improve patient safety and the effectiveness of intravenous therapy by detecting adverse IV events early to minimize the risk of injury caused by infiltrations and extravasations. He is also a regular at First Watch restaurant, where Ruffin worked, and encouraged her to apply for a VGBIP internship.

While working as a server and then as a babysitter, Ruffin was also attending school. She first attended Thomas Nelson Community College (now Virginia Peninsula Community College), starting courses while still in high school, before transferring to the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary.

At William & Mary, Ruffin found a faculty mentor who helped spark an interest in marketing. Before meeting Lisa Szykman, Ruffin studied psychology. Szykman, who focuses on the connections between marketing, advertising, and consumers, inspired Ruffin to shift her studies from human behavior to consumer behavior.

In 2024, Ruffin followed Clare’s advice and applied to the VGBIP. VEDP matched her with ivWatch as a standout candidate, and the company selected her from a pool of highly recommended applicants. While many there already knew Ruffin, she still exceeded their high expectations.

Over just 10 weeks, Ruffin contributed to key deliverables and processes. Between June and August of 2024, she:

• Developed a presentation about branding guidelines that is still in use
• Spearheaded efforts to align a brand guide and marketing terms
• Helped identify target customers and built relationships with them, using social media to research potential leads
• Facilitated collaboration across departments
• Tracked key events and publications, while monitoring marketing trends, the competitive landscape, and emerging concepts and technologies

“Lydia was a phenomenal sponge. She wanted to learn. She conducted herself extremely professionally,” said Kristi Stevens, ivWatch’s vice president of business development and marketing operations. “We’re a very small company, so she’s in meetings with the CEO, vice presidents. She was a self-starter, a go-getter.”

Ruffin helped the company as it streamlined and sharpened its marketing and fine-tuned messaging to various countries, each with a different regulatory regime and culture. “She didn’t just complete tasks. She took ownership,” Stevens said.

A Crucial Product 

That sense of responsibility arose partly, Ruffin said, from her awareness of the critical importance of the medical devices she worked to brand and market. Ruffin met a patient who lost fingers to amputation after an IV leak wasn’t detected soon enough. She also learned of the challenges monitoring premature babies who can’t communicate about pain or discomfort.

“Hearing stories like that, and hearing from real people and the real effects of things like this, was mind-blowing,” Ruffin said.

For Ruffin, who graduated from William & Mary earlier this year, the internship solidified her interest in marketing and opened her eyes to global markets — she’s considering furthering her education in international marketing or global development.

“Interning at ivWatch was a truly transformative experience that allowed me to apply my academic background in a meaningful, real-world setting,” Ruffin said. “From day one, I was treated as a valued member of the team and entrusted with projects that had a direct impact on the company’s global marketing strategy. I gained hands-on experience in international market research, brand development, and cross-functional collaboration, which are skills I’ll carry with me throughout my career.”

Advancing her career path while contributing to better health care worldwide was especially meaningful to Ruffin.

“The opportunity to contribute to ivWatch’s mission of improving patient safety on a global scale was both inspiring and rewarding,” she said. “I’m incredibly grateful to have been part of such an innovative and purpose-driven organization.”

The feeling of gratitude is mutual: ivWatch hopes that Ruffin will someday return to work at the company on a permanent basis. “We were trying to find ways to creatively keep her on,” Stevens said.

Ruffin is a standout example of a student leveraging her personal, professional, and educational connections with positive, influential relationships and a strong work ethic to create her own success story — with the VGBIP playing a supporting role through its efforts to attract top talent in the state.