Fortune Footwear Bets on Its Interns

At Fortune Footwear, it’s not just executives in meetings with the president and footwear designers or traveling to China factories. Interns, too, get in on the action. “There’s an atmosphere there of equality — we’re all equal,” said Dominic Doria, a junior at Cornell University who as part of his summer internship at Fortune Footwear, just returned from Dongguan, an industrial city in China, where he was involved in the making of shoes and quality controls for about two weeks. This summer, 14 interns, in college, graduate school or entering the job market, have been working at Fortune Footwear, a New York-based, midsize footwear manufacturer supplying top shoe designers and major department and specialty stores. Unlike most fashion interns, those at Fortune Footwear aren’t on coffee runs or running errands. They become immersed in the operations of the company, learn the ins and outs of the business, and get some practical business experience. “The first thing I learned in China was how to communicate with factory workers who didn’t speak my language. I used a lot of gestures,” said Doria, who is studying industrial labor relations and is on the lacrosse team at Cornell. “It was a great experience being able to work in

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