Looking Back at My Second Summer Internship with Darogan
10 October 2025
Mared Jones
Bigger Team. Bolder Ambition. Big Things Coming…
My second summer with Darogan truly built upon my last in almost every meaningful way. The events that I was part of organising and delivering were hugely expanded compared to my first internship – from a small, targeted careers event in Mid Wales to a hundreds-strong national event in Cardiff for GradCon Cymru 2025. The creative tools and opportunities when branding events, webpages, and social media outputs were bolder, yet more focused and user-friendly. But most importantly, the welcome and trust from Darogan’s team was as inspiring and encouraging as last year, reinforcing my belief in both the company’s mission to attract Welsh graduate talent back to the country, and its ability to deliver on it.
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Returning to Darogan for a second summer has provided a very welcome channel for my post-graduation desire to immerse myself into Wales’s promising sectors and workplaces.
Immediately, a fresh rebrand (hwyl fawr, ‘Talent’!) and 2 new team members (helo, Mared a Dan!) gave me a real sense of Darogan’s positive trajectory as its ambition and expertise develops. The issues that are core to the company’s mission (such as the ‘brain drain’ of graduate talent away from Wales) have not gone away, but Darogan are ambitiously rising to the challenge – chasing national benefit and social value, not profit margins, with a fantastic team incorporating skillsets that better place it to do so.
A particular highlight of this increased capacity and ambition was GradCon Cymru 2025: a first-of-its-kind event (though by no means the last!) in Cardiff which brought 50 employers and 500 students and graduates together. Seeing the efforts made by employers and attendees demonstrated the desire for Wales’s graduate talent to be given the chance to champion Welsh jobs – a chance which Darogan strives to provide and promote every day. On a broader scale, GradCon also represented a positive success story in an often-negative discourse on employment opportunities in the UK. It was an honour to be a part of this alternate narrative!
The feeling of working as a truly independent and trusted part of the team, allowed by Darogan’s flexibility and openness in workplace culture, has felt like a rewarding development from my introduction to the company last summer. Darogan put their money where their mouth is when it comes to graduate opportunities in Wales – Owain, Jack, Mared, Dan, Gwenno, and Elen (my fantastic fellow intern!) always made time to develop my skills in different areas of the business: from marketing and design to coding, mass communication campaigns and event organisation. The breadth of knowledge and orientation I was offered is testament to the dedication of the Darogan team to fostering Welsh talent for Wales’s workforce.
I now feel better equipped for entering the world of work in Wales, with experience and skillsets gained from my time at Darogan that I will cherish during my graduate job search and indeed, far beyond. I wish Darogan all the very best in the years to come and will follow their work with great interest.
