This summer, we welcomed an incredible class of interns to Toole Design — our largest cohort to date with 22 interns in 13 offices and covering 6 disciplines. These talented young professionals brought energy, curiosity, and a shared commitment to making places better for all people and all modes of travel.
From day one, our 2025 interns dove right into their Toole Design experience: joining lunch-and-learn sessions, exploring new software, and taking on significant roles on projects ranging from Vision Zero and Safe Routes to School planning to mobility hubs and multimodal wayfinding. Each day brought a new challenge or connection for these young professionals, helping them hone their skills and find new approaches to explore as they chart their career path. Check out the video below to see a day in the life of our Oakland planning intern Kaitlyn Kwan!
Hands-On Learning with National Impact
Beyond their daily contributions, our 2025 interns also collaborated on a group project to develop engaging materials activities for Toole Design’s workshop on the 2024 AASHTO Bike Guide at the ITE Annual Meeting this past August. Each team explored a different chapter of the Guide with support from a staff mentor. The teams received training and guidance all along the way from the Guide’s lead author Bill Schultheiss and Director of Engineering Operations Michelle Danila.
The interns designed scenarios and avatars to show how bicycle facility design must adapt to real-world conditions, such as budgets, existing infrastructure, roadway volumes and speeds, and the needs of people biking. During the workshop, these ideas came to life through a bikeway selection activity. Participants used the intern-developed facility design criteria tip sheet to determine which bikeways made most sense in different contexts.
The exercises were well-received, giving participants practical tools they could apply right away. For the interns, it was a chance to experience consulting firsthand by synthesizing technical guidance and developing resources to make learning easier for a variety of transportation practitioners.
Looking Ahead to the Future
As the internship period comes to an end, we’re excited to see how our 2025 interns’ contributions will continue to shape our work and the active transportation industry. We’re especially pleased that several of them are continuing on as full-time Toole Design staff.
If you’re inspired by their journey, we encourage you to apply to our internship program in the future and become part of the next generation of changemakers.
