Major: Labor and Employment Relations, Psychology; Business
Hometown: Ramsey, New Jersey
Chapel Executive Intern

How did you learn about this opportunity?

I've been an avid browser on Network Simplicity for internship opportunities during the last two years, which is where I found and applied for the position at UBS. This tool was especially helpful by indicating how strong the match was between my credentials/preferences and the job qualifications and helped me narrow my focus to key opportunities.

"...liberal arts students fair extremely well in the private sector because we bring a different skill set and fresh perspective to our work than perhaps traditional business students."

Tell us a little bit about your experience.

I had the privilege of interning in a unique area at UBS as part of the HR Service Delivery Americas Change Team. This team is considered a "change the bank" function, which focuses on strategic transformation within Human Resources for the Americas region. My focus this summer was on a long term consulting project to redesign the welcome experience for New Joiners to the company. I joined the team at the beginning of the "diagnose phase" for the project, which lasted about five weeks. In this phase, I conducted interviews with line managers and new joiners, researched industry and functional best practices, and presented part of our report out presentation to senior management. The next five weeks were spent in the "design & plan phase" where my team and I developed a vision, principles, and designed the future state of the orientation experience. Even though this concluded my ten week program, the project has since moved on to the "implementation phase" and will wrap up with the "roll out phase" in the coming weeks, which I anxiously await for an update on the project's success!

How did this experience impact you academically?

This experience solidified that the paths of study I chose were the absolute right choices for me and also clarified the type of work I hope to do after graduation. I feel empowered to seek out opportunities and tailor my senior year to experiences that will be valuable for this type of career in the future. I've also found it very exciting to see how applicable my studies have been thus far. There has been material and skills developed from multiple courses in my last three years at Penn State that have helped me significantly during my time with UBS.

What are your career goals and plans?  How did this experience impact them?

Even though I've narrowed the scope of my career aspirations, I still have some options so I'm not exactly sure where I'll end up. Ideally, I'll work for a few years after graduation as a management consultant or as a human resources professional and then go to graduate school. Regardless of the direction I take, this internship experience has taught me a lot about my working style: autonomous, collaborative, and with variation.

Would you recommend this experience to other Liberal Arts students?

I would absolutely recommend this experience! I have found in this internship, as well as a previous internship, that liberal arts students fair extremely well in the private sector because we bring a different skill set and fresh perspective to our work than perhaps traditional business students. As a testament to that point, I've attended many senior leader speaking engagements at UBS and interestingly, many of those extremely successful executives are the ones whose major didn't correlate perfectly with a career path. I think that really says a lot about the culture at UBS and the company values. Another reason I'd recommend this experience is that in a global organization with over 60,000 employees, there are so many jobs I never even knew existed. There were so many ways to learn about not only your role, but the roles of others and how the larger organization works together - a really useful experience when considering possible career paths.