ERA PRESS RELEASE
March 19, 2024
Contact: Clare Kluck / Communications Director / ckluck@era.org

ERA Announces the Recipients of the 2024 Mark Motsinger White Pin Internships

The ERA White Pin group is proud to announce the recipients of the 2024 Mark Motsinger White Pin Internships:

• Julia Rowe, Business Marketing major at East Carolina University, interning at Pinnacle Marketing
• Nathan Dubsky, Business Analytics and Entrepreneurship major at the University of Cincinnati, interning at Staffco
• Ethan Bowers, Engineering Management major at the Missouri University of Science & Technology, interning at R.W. Kunz and Associates

This is the third year that the ERA White Pin Group and ERA National have partnered to award three internships to manufacturers’ representative firms in various regions of North America to help hire and onboard college students as interns during the summer or academic year.

“Thank you for everything the illustrious White Pin Group has done to support scholarships like the one presented to us,” said Perry Thornton, president, Pinnacle Marketing. “We are very excited to work with Julia to teach and to learn. There is much to gain for all parties!”

“Nathan showed us that he has the communication skills and entrepreneurial attitude that are necessary to be successful in the manufacturers’ representative business,” said Charlie Essi, area manager at Staffco. “He is solution-focused on how we can leverage data to drive business efficiency and results. We feel he will be a good fit to our culture at Staffco and that this will be a mutually beneficial summer experience!”

“This internship will be structured so our intern will get a full understanding of how the manufacturers’ representative industry is an important asset to its customers, distributors and manufacturers represented,” said Mark Bowers, vice president, R.W. Kunz and Associates. “Ethan will learn about territory and account management, outside sales, technology marketing and enhanced communications and gain product knowledge of the design-in process at the engineering level. I look forward to this summer with further hopes that he will join the R.W. Kunz team afterwards.”

“The ERA White Pin Group is very excited to award three internships for Summer 2024,” said Kingsland Coombs, CPMR, CSP, senior vice president at large for the ERA Executive Committee and director of the White Pin group. “The interns will be tasked with basic marketing responsibilities, data analytics and also will be given the opportunity to shadow account managers on customer calls, distributor trainings as well as attend tradeshows. We hope that these interns will learn the manufacturers’ representative model, appreciate it, embrace it and join their rep firms in future employment after graduation.”

ERA launched the Mark Motsinger White Pin Internship program in 2022 as a way to help the rep community introduce the rep model to college students and attract, hire and retain young people to keep the electronics industry fresh and relevant. The program allows rising college juniors or seniors to work for a manufacturers’ representative firm over the summer months to gain a better understanding and hands-on experience of the electronic components industry.

The internship program was named after Mark Motsinger, president of Wallace Electronic Sales, who served as executive director of the ERA White Pin group for more than 16 years. Motsinger helped to define the educational role of the White Pin group and helped promote the hiring and onboarding of new college graduates into our industry.

Please join ERA in congratulating all the rep companies and interns!

About ERA

The 88-year-old Electronics Representatives Association (ERA) is the international trade organization for professional field sales companies in the global electronics industries, manufacturers who go to market through representative firms and global distributors. It is the mission of ERA to support the professional field sales function through programs and activities that educate, inform and advocate for manufacturers’ representatives, the principals they represent and the distributors who are reps’ partners in local territories. For more information about ERA, visit era.org.