Internship Reflection: Ontario West

The Walton MBA program provides every student the opportunity to complete an internship with a company of their desire or companies they have great relationships with. Reminiscing over this past summer, I reflected on the hardships, learning opportunities, soul searching and victories I experienced through multiple internships.

Starting with Henkel, a leading solutions provider for adhesives, sealants, and functional coatings worldwide, was the company I began my internship journey with. Although my time with Henkel was short lived, I still gained insights and took away learning opportunities as it relates to professional development.

For my next internship opportunity, I developed a mindset of finding an organization or company who values aligned with mine and which specific tangible skills I could develop. The Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation turned out to be that organization for me. I had the pleasure of working with Deb Williams, Madison Sutton and other OEI staff members. The positive and supportive culture of OEI brought great joy to the experience of my internship.

Many significant changes started to take effect in my development as an intern working for OEI. The level of commitment, effort, and motivation I gave to my projects lead to me receiving an offer from OEI to continue working for them throughout the school year. I was granted full control on various projects and programs to lead and manage.

One of them was a leadership position in creating the vision and structure of a student-led advisory committee for the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. I aligned this committee around achieving five goals:

1.  Increase awareness and enrollment between students and programs offered by OEI
2.  Inform underrepresented groups of students about the OEI community
3.  Highlight voices of current students actively engaged in OEI programs
4.  Promote OEI and programs broadly across campus
5.  Build and support a diverse and inclusive environment in OEI programs

Leading and managing people, effective communication, and project management are a few of the skills I aimed to develop with the OEI student advisory committee. Other projects I manage with OEI are:

• Content planning and creation for the OEI Community Group on the RazorLink platform
• Creating social media content for Venture Intern Program students on TikTok
• Hosting recruitment events during the first week of school

When choosing an internship, I encourage all students to review the company’s values, their current skillsets and the skills they hope to develop in the internship.