Hands-on Experience: Summer Internships
By Mary Kilcoyne
While this past summer may not have provided students at the Integrated Innovation Institute with endless days of vacation, it did offer them the opportunity to apply skills learned in the classroom to real-life challenges in industry.
Students took advantage: They secured summer internships at top companies like Equinix, Red Hat, Adobe, and Volvo. They sharpened the tools in their toolkits, sampled job functions and roles, gained practical experience, and utilized their integrated approach to advance company projects.
Explore the internship experience
Manuja Gokulan (MSSM '21)
Google X (aka the moonshot factory)
Product Manager Intern - hybrid internship
Describe your summer internship experience in one sentence.
A summer filled with lots of learning, meeting passionate, kind and smart folks, fun conversations and some good amount of caffeine!
Tell us about your role at Google X.
I got an incredible opportunity to work on an innovative product that enables internet connectivity to underserved communities through beams of light. I focused on product growth features and strategies for acquisition and adoption. Outside of Product Management, I was able to test my idea for a technical problem with a team in Sub-Saharan Africa! Being able to own and drive ideas end-to-end helped me develop two key skills: one, being scrappy, hands-on and the other, developing big-picture thinking and influencing stakeholders to see value in an idea that aligns with the product vision.
What did you most enjoy about your internship and why?
I enjoyed defining various aspects of the product to drive value for our users. Waking up each day knowing I get to play a part in digital inclusion, improving someone's life through connectivity kept me going through the challenges and ambiguity.
What were your key takeaways and learnings?
I learned from my team the need to experiment, learn and iterate quickly in uncertain situations. Aim for 10X, not 10%, is one of my biggest moonshot takeaways.
Prisillah Thomas (MIIPS Advanced Study '21)
CGI Inc.
Product Designer - hybrid internship
Describe your summer internship experience in one sentence.
It was nothing short of being transformative.
Tell us about your role at CGI Inc.
I worked as a project strategy intern in the human-centered design team. I worked on market research, competitive analysis, value flow modeling, go-to-market strategy, and business case building.
What did you most enjoy about your internship and why?
I enjoyed working on a strategy project that was guided by core HCD principles. I was thrilled to see some of my favorite tools and methods being put into practice and felt great to be a part of it. I also enjoyed working in an atmosphere that was so rich in culture and was nurturing as a whole. As a result, I was able to grow personally and professionally.
What were your key takeaways and learnings?
Learning is a continuous process. There is something to learn from every person you meet and being curious is the key.
Chanson Kuo (MIIPS Advanced Study '21)
ZOLL LifeVest
UX Design Intern - hybrid internship
Describe your summer internship experience in one sentence.
Never predictable, always challenging.
Tell us about your role at ZOLL LifeVest.
I was responsible for heading two studies that helped to form the basis of an early-stage new project for the company. I also created visual redesigns of a patient portal, login page, and printed reports of patient data.
What did you most enjoy about your internship and why?
As the lone UX intern at the company, I enjoyed being able to perform on interdisciplinary teams, with a lot of freedom in how I got to tackle the projects I was given.
What were your key takeaways and learnings?
I learned that one of the most important skills for a designer to develop is the ability to clearly explain their design decisions and rationale to non-design individuals/teams. While being able to create attractive, functional designs is a valuable technical skill, the ability to communicate those designs and sell the importance of them is equally if not more so important.
Madhusmita Borah (MSSM '21)
ServiceNow
Product/Program Management Intern - remote internship
Describe your summer internship experience in ONE sentence.
It was an unforgettable experience for me!
Tell us about your role at ServiceNow.
I worked on three initiatives in the Product Innovation and Incubation team under IT Digital Employee Experiences. This team creates products such as web applications and mobile apps for customers and publishes them in the external-facing ServiceNow Innovation Lab store.
As a Product/Program Operations intern, I started by participating in a new product’s discovery phase shadowing the senior PM. This also helped me in understanding the current product lifecycle process, planning strategies, and overall understanding the dynamics of the organization. This was also an opportunity for me to create a huge impact by creating recommendations for the Go-To-Market strategy to increase adoption and customer engagement for the apps in the ServiceNow Innovation Lab. My goal was to perform a gap analysis of the current product lifecycle process to identify the pain points and challenges faced by various roles in the process and share recommendations to alleviate these pain points to make the process more efficient. My recommendations will be shared by Director of Operations to his peers with the goal of implementing all or some of my suggestions.
My third initiative was to lead the promotion and marketing of the 2021 Intern Citizen Developers Hackathon. The CD Hackathon was an exciting intern event that required hackers to pitch an idea to solve a pressing problem at ServiceNow within a limited amount of time. The best app ideas won prizes. As an organizer, I first created a draft project plan and presented it to the Program Manager of the event. I then owned up the marketing and promotion of the event via videos, posts, polls, articles and blogs to the 300+ interns through various channels over 1.5 months. The event was a roaring success.
What did you most enjoy about your internship and why?
Having prior experience in a corporate environment for 8+ years, I was expecting the internship to embody mostly work and less or no additional activities. The least I expected were tech workshops or leadership sessions. What really stood out for me was the complete summer internship experience. Apart from work-related sessions, there were several events hosted by the Early in Career team and respective departments. ServiceNow has great work ethics and believes in the power of giving feedback. Of the company’s six values, “stay hungry and humble” and “enjoy the journey” resonated the most with me. Not only did I receive guidance, support and quick response from my manager, mentor, coach, employees, and peers but also from executive leadership.
What were your key takeaways and learnings?
- I was trying to absorb much more about the company in week-1 than I could. It was overwhelming. Steady and consistent learning helped me understand the dynamics, work culture, and goals of the organization.
- Communication is key to getting the work done. I learnt that ‘over communication’ is better than ‘under communication’ or ‘no communication’.
- Keep looking out for additional opportunities and be proactive to go for them. Whether it be helping out colleagues with a skill you have and they don’t or taking part in competitions, your efforts will be noticed and you will naturally come across as someone who can balance work with additional activities.
- Express gratitude. Thank the people who helped you at work. The Valley is small, be kind!