WVU soccer star Kiley Harris takes "Just Do It" to heart

	The long trip from West Virginia to Oregon has paid off for Kiley Harris.
	More Interns of the Week Lauren Kobylarz (Duke) Willie Bodrick (Georgetown) Elizabeth Bohnsack (Rutgers) Kiley Harris (WVU) Drew Weatherford (FSU)

By Mallory Rubin

Name: Kiley Harris
School: West Virginia
Year: Senior
Age: 21
Major: Sport Management
Internship: Adrenaline internship program, Nike Headquarters (paid and for college credit)
Hours: 8-5, M-F, until August 3

Kiley Harris puts a lot of stock in first impressions. As a high school senior being recruited for soccer, Harris made a list of five colleges to visit. First up was West Virginia University, where Harris fell in love with the people, the program and the place. She visited two more schools but decided there was no point in seeing the final two; she knew she wanted to be at WVU.

Last year, Harris and the WVU soccer team ventured out to Oregon to play the University of Portland. It was a weekend-long tournament, so after one game the team went to Nike Headquarters for a tour. Harris took in the place's campus-like nature with its lake, outdoor track, workout facilities and restaurants.

Harris knew she wanted to work at Nike. The only question was how to get there. She started exchanging e-mails with Charles Brown, director of global footwear product integrity for Nike, Inc. and a WVU alumnus. Brown encouraged Harris to apply for his internship with corporate responsibility. She applied, and though she had sent in applications for other internships both within and outside of Nike, she accepted the offer as soon as she found out she was chosen.

In both cases, Harris trusted her instincts. And in both cases, she's been thrilled with her choice.

Some might scoff upon hearing Nike even has a corporate responsibility division, but as an intern in that department, Harris has seen first hand all that Nike does to ensure compliance with standards. Harris is currently linking up ratings system codes so they will be the same for compliance as they are for footwear and apparel.

"A lot of colleges today actually want to know if their products that are being made are being made appropriately, so I need to look at the ratings," Harris said. "Nike rates its factories "A" through "D," so I look at whether or not the factories meet approval for the colleges."

Harris is also looking at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She is finding which factories produce the apparel for each country that will wear Nike, checking their ratings and determining whether they need an audit. Brown has also put Harris in touch with some people who work on soccer marketing so she can go to some of their meetings if she is interested in the topics.

Harris is a sports fan (as a native of Noblesville, Ind., she's particularly passionate about the Indianapolis Colts), but she knows that if she crosses paths with a star athlete while walking around Nike campus, she'll have to keep her cool.

"If you see a professional athlete on campus who's sponsored by Nike, you're not allowed to go up and say, 'Oh, can I get your autograph or your picture?' because technically they're your co-worker because they're working for Nike," Harris said. "So you have to treat them like they're your co-worker and just go about your day."

The prospect of running into star athletes while going to lunch isn't the best perk of the internship, however.

"I get access to their employee store, which is awesome," Harris said. "The employee store is for all their employees, it's a huge store of all new Nike stuff that's all half off, so that's pretty cool."

Better still for an athlete like Harris is the free access interns have to the headquarter workout facilities and the pick-up women's soccer team she recently discovered.

"I thought I was going to come out here and train by myself," said Harris. "It's so cool that I get to play."

In addition to playing pick-up soccer (the team goes by "Swoosh"), Harris is hoping to try some of the more adventurous activities Oregon has to offer. Though she does not have a car with her out West, she's made friends and is hoping to go on a camping excursion or perhaps even a white-water rafting trip.

Mostly, however, Harris is looking forward to making the most of an internship that she hopes might one day lead to a career with Nike. She has found corporate responsibility interesting, but her dream would be to work in Marketing for the company.

Harris hopes she's a better intern than soccer player ("This is going to be my future!" she said), but she knows the skills she has learned from playing soccer -- such as discipline, teamwork and time management -- have been invaluable to her in this internship. For Harris, who has played soccer since she was five-years-old, this experience is much bigger than the time she is spending linking up factory ratings.

"Being athletic, being able to work in a place where you can work out at lunch or you can work out whenever you want, and you get to be around all the athletes who are here," Harris said. "It's an athlete's dream."