Be Agile: End of Internship Story by Mark Santon

Mark started his internship at Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) in January 2020 after completing his Master’s of Public Administration degree with the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs. Prior to joining Team CDOT, Mark worked in higher education and software consulting for several years.

At CDOT, Mark personally identified with two key values of CDOT: Excellence and Customer Service. His goal during his internship was to learn how to apply these two values to his current and future work in government administration. Mark explains, “I always thought of building excellent, customer-centric products and services as a private sector opportunity.” He went on to add that viewing the government as a disrupter and top-notch customer experience provider changed his view on public service. “It took me a while to realize, prior to coming to CDOT, that government can actually lead the way in innovation, customer service, and excellence.” Part of Mark’s passion to be an innovative public leader stems from his experience in using the Agile methodology. Agile was born out of software development thought leaders in the early 2000’s and is now making waves in other industries as a new way to innovate and deliver high-quality products to customers. He went on to discuss how his time at CDOT was invaluable to practicing Agile in a State government environment stating, “I enjoyed the culture at CDOT with daily team stand-up meetings, visual Kanban boards, and iterative project work cycles.”