In 2020, COVID-19 shutdowns prevented ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ students from working their summer internships. In response to the problem, the Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship created the Remote Entrepreneurship Project (REP) Program, pairing students with startups across the country for a remote internship experience. Many of those students have since graduated from ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ and have made strides in their careers. See how the REP program impacted their career trajectory.
(CWR '21)
What're you up to now?
Hey! I'm currently working as a business technology analyst at Deloitte. More specifically, I'm working within the NextGen Therapies practice where we help Biotech companies with their commercialization, supply chain optimization, tech transformation, etc. I'm currently on my third project within the firm, and I'm involved in a number of different initiatives. One being an industry working group where we bring together several of these biotech companies to talk about industry hot topics and share ideas to accelerate the delivery of therapies to patients. Lastly, I participated in StartUp Deloitte, where practitioners from around the country come to learn about entrepreneurship and participate in a hackathon style pitch competition with a final presentation at the end. I have currently been at Deloitte for a little over a year.
How did your time as an REP intern at and impact your career trajectory?
During my junior year summer we were hit with COVID-19 hard. My medical device internship was completely canceled, and I was left with only my old tennis coaching job. That's when and the REP [program] came to the rescue. Not only was I fortunate enough to intern with one company, but another one took me on as an intern. At both of these companies, I was able to start and learn how to prioritize work in a virtual world, something that I had never done before. In addition I was able to succeed and fail in a learning environment, which gave me great experience when coming into Deloitte. Although Deloitte might be the opposite of what a startup is, the lessons learned from REP still apply in my day-to-day life at Deloitte.
What lessons did you learn from your time working at a startup that you now apply to working at Deloitte?
As mentioned previously, this was really my first time working in a virtual environment. I found it extremely difficult to manage myself and prioritize work (especially during the summer) but towards the end of the internship found myself working towards creating deliverables and working closely with key stakeholders in order to deliver cutting edge projects. My REP mentors (Mat Coolidge and Steven Girouard) stayed in close touch with me throughout my time at their respective companies. Mat and I had a Slack that we used daily, and Steve and I would text/call regularly (including Steve's engineers). In my current role, communication is king, and REP was able to help foster those skills from the very start.