Meet the Incoming Sunny Harris Hutchinson PGA WORKS Fellow!
Greensboro, NC – Camilla (Cami) Terkildsen is a recent May 2024 graduate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She graduated with a B.A. in communications and minors in Business and Spanish. She is also from Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois.
If you were to ask Cami today how it was getting to where she is now as the 8th Sara Sunny Harris Hutchinson PGA WORKS Fellow for PGA REACH Carolinas, she would say it was a long path of figuring out who she was and what she wanted to do for a career. She is a strong believer that things happen for a reason, and she knows she came across the PGA WORKS Fellowship for a reason.
Cami describes the fellowship as a role that combines two of her great interests: event planning and sports. At the University of Illinois, Cami was a part of the Student Alumni Ambassadors (SAA). SAA is a student organization that works with the university to provide diverse and inclusive events for students, faculty, staff, families, and alumni. Events include Sights&Sounds (the freshman orientation), Homecoming, iHelp (a day of service), and much more. Cami served as the President and eventually the Vice President of Alumni Relations where she had hands-on experience with planning every aspect of an event. These positions inspired her to want to pursue a role where she could be involved in the execution of events. Additionally, Cami grew up playing competitive soccer, which included practicing three times a week, playing games on the weekends, attending camps, and even traveling for tournaments. All these years of soccer, watching the Premier League on weekend mornings with her dad, enjoying Illini sporting events, and even recreationally playing everything and anything with friends, instilled a love for sports into Cami. Before applying for the fellowship, Cami also took an interest in golf and wanted to broaden her horizons. Accepting the fellowship for the Carolinas PGA was an ideal opportunity to immerse herself in the dynamic sports industry, contribute to event planning, and further her learning.
Some may argue that there are various roles that involve event planning and sports, why move so far from home for this specific position? Cami says because “this is truly a position unlike any other”. She comes from a mixed background with a mother who was born in Mexico and a father from Denmark. She grew up away from extended family and traveled long distances to see them, which allowed her to have time immersed in her own family’s cultures. She is grateful to say that with those travels, came more experiences. She has seen beautiful places, from the beaches in Thailand to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Additionally, she has seen some not-so-beautiful things like the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and extreme poverty. All of these experiences taught Cami to be open-minded to the world around her, to appreciate the differences between people, and to value inclusion. With that mentality, the goal for inclusion with PGA WORKS stood out to Cami when coming across this role. It is incredibly meaningful for her to be in a position that not only interests her but also gives her a sense of fulfillment in bringing others together.