CHARLOTTE, NC/July 20, 2026 - For most college students, landing one summer internship is the goal. Johnson C. Smith University rising senior Zoe Migioni ended up with three — and she'll be the first to tell you it wasn't the plan.
"It was not planned at all," Migioni said with a laugh. "The only thing that I knew I was going to do was the Data Stewards internship. Everything else kind of just found its way to me."
The biology major and bioinformatics minor, who will graduate in May 2027, spent her summer moving between a virtual data internship, a bioinformatics research lab, and a classroom full of energetic young readers — three very different rooms, one common thread: putting her Smith education to work.
Bridging Charlotte's Data Gap
Migioni's summer anchor was the Data Stewards internship, a partnership between UNC Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College, and JCSU that pairs students from the three institutions with Charlotte-area nonprofits. The mission: help organizations doing important community work get a handle on the data behind it.
"A lot of nonprofits in Charlotte do a lot of good work, but they're not doing very well with managing their data or analyzing it," she explained. "They're overwhelmed because they have less staff. As the students, we come in to help bridge that gap."
Migioni began the program in the spring — and this summer, she was the lone JCSU student carrying the work forward.
From Rejection to the Tick Lab
Her second opportunity — the DataSmiths Summer Research Internship — arrived after a season of closed doors. From December through April, Migioni applied to internship after internship, interviewing with programs she genuinely believed she'd join. None of them worked out.
Then Dr. Sabina D. Otienoburu, whom Migioni had first met during a panel discussion as a sophomore, reached out and invited her to join DataSmiths, a research experience through Johnson C. Smith University. Migioni was placed at the UNC Charlotte site, where the program ran in stages: a two-week bootcamp followed by four weeks of hands-on research.
The commute alone was a commitment — the Gold Line to the Blue Line, about an hour each way to the bioinformatics lab. The work was worth it. Her cohort, a mix of biology and computer science students, analyzed DNA from tick samples collected in Somalia and The Gambia, learned field collection methods at North Carolina nature reserves, and searched sequenced data for mitochondrial genomes.
For a student whose lab experience had mostly been "dry labs" — coding and computational analysis — watching DNA extraction happen in front of her was a revelation.
"It's a process you think about in the back of your mind," she said. "But it's always different when you actually get to experience it and see it being done in front of you."
It also confirmed something about her JCSU foundation. "We learn a lot of theory, and it's great to have a lot of theory," Migioni said. "Smith gave me all the knowledge, and then when you go to the internships, you now practice that knowledge."
Steward to the Smallest Smithites
Migioni's third role found her in the JCSU library, studying for the MCAT, when Residence Hall Coordinator Octavius Rice asked if she'd be interested in facilitating the Smitty and Friends Literacy Boot Camp.
"I said, 'Yeah, for sure. I love kids,'" she recalled.
As a facilitator, Migioni guided campers through story time, physical activities, and daily routines — "we're like their stewards," she said. A camp facilitator for four years back home in Harare, Zimbabwe, she still found new lessons in the little ones, especially the challenge of making every child feel valued.
"It's not just teaching them and telling them what to do," she said. "It's also trying my best to make sure that they all feel seen, that they all feel heard."
She sees a direct line from the camp to her future in medicine. "I can take in all the knowledge from biology, but I have to be able to use it — and explain it to people who might not understand it. Say I become a doctor or a researcher, I need to be able to give instructions. Those are transferable skills you don't learn in class."
Tired From Doing Stuff
Ask Migioni how she balanced it all, and she points to how she was raised — in one big house in Harare with her parents and grandparents, where there was always something to do.
"I don't like being bored," she said. "Even though I might complain about being tired, I'd rather be tired from doing stuff than not doing anything at all."
Three programs. One summer. Zero of it planned — and all of it excellence.
