New Canaan High School senior Matthew Angilletta felt nervous coming into his internship with Trillium Architects—a Ridgefield-based boutique firm specializing in “Passive House”, “Net Zero,” and off-the-grid design of new homes, additions and renovations.
Dave Reilly of Trillium Architects teaching model building to Interns Daniel Yoo and Matthew Angilletta.
Part of the popular NCHS Senior Internship Program or “SIP,” Angilletta is planning to study mechanical engineering at Northeastern University in the fall, with his first semester abroad in Dublin.
“It’s my first time in a work environment, but I’ve found that everybody in the office is super warm and inviting and it’s been very interesting to tag along to job sites and work on models,” he told NewCanaanite.com on a recent afternoon, about two weeks into the internship with Trillium. “It’s been a lot of fun so far.”
Angilletta is one of 362 seniors placed across 230 internship sites under the SIP program this year—that’s 97% of all NCHS seniors, according to the program’s coordinator, Kelly DelMazio.
Elizabeth DiSalvo, founder and CEO of Trillium Architects, has received the 2025 Women in Architecture Award from AIA Connecticut. Contributed
Offering real-world work experience, connections and a resume-builder, the program is “off to a strong start” this year, DelMazio said.
“After just a couple of weeks, it’s been incredible to see students fully immersed in real-world experiences,” she said in an email. “Whether they’re conducting research, teaching in the classroom, working behind the scenes in production, shadowing a doctor, or exploring their passions in marketing, finance, or design.”
Trillium’s founder and CEO, architect Elizabeth DiSalvo—winner of AIA Connecticut’s prestigious 2025 Women in Architecture Award—has been in business for 20 years, and her company received a citation recently from the state General Assembly for being “a leader in moving the green building industry forward in its commitment to exceeding energy standards, embracing innovative technologies, and raising awareness of how building green can help combat climate change.”
Duncan Fox of Trillium Architects with Interns Daniel Yoo and Matthew Angilletta.
DiSalvo, who has designed smart and sustainable houses in New Canaan, said that her two NCHS senior interns this year—Angilletta and West Point-bound Daniel Yoo— “have a fantastic attitude.”
“They’re really super interested and hard-working and so far they have been going to job sites and attending in-office meetings with clients and they’re also building a model—old-school, physically—which we thought would be fun.”
Yoo, who will study civil engineering at the U.S. Military Academy, said the internship with Trillium has been “more than what I expected.”
“There’s a hands-on element to it which is something that I really gravitate toward,” he said. “And while it’s not exactly an engineering internship, I’m still dealing with a lot of problem-solving skills and working on plans that need to be reviewed and drafted by engineers.”
Gaby Beecher of New Canaan Music. Credit: Michael Dinan
DelMazio said that hosts such as DiSalvo continue to tell the NCHS SIP staff and committee “how impressed they are with our students’ professionalism, curiosity, and work ethic.”
“It’s clear that these internships are not only building skills but also building confidence and helping students explore future paths in meaningful ways,” she said. “We are grateful to our hosts and mentors for making these experiences possible and proud of our students for embracing them with such enthusiasm and purpose.”
At its best, the SIP program is mutually beneficial to both host site and student—such is the case at New Canaan Music, which has taken on NCHS interns for at least 10 years, according to Operations Manager Gaby Beecher.
This year’s intern for New Canaan Music, senior Sam Wang, “has been great,” Beecher said.
“Sam is actually writing code for us,” she said. “We had wanted to create barcodes for all of our rental fleet and I was trying to figure out how to do it with our system, and he said, ‘Oh well that’s a very simple code—I can write the code for you, it will take you a couple of days but then the entire fleet will have barcodes that you can scan.’ And I was like, see? This is why we need an intern. We need an intern once a year to do all the tech things that we can’t figure out.”