I am going into my fourth year of Honours International Development, with a focus on Economic Development and a minor in Anthropology. This year I have gained a newfound interest in business and believe it would be a valuable skill to have to supplement my background in International Development. As such, I will be focusing on taking management courses in my final year at 捆绑SM社区 and thought it fitting to take on an internship this summer at a start-up so as to introduce me to the world of business. My previous work experience has been at two non-profit organizations where I gained exposure to the logistics of the NGO world. At a former internship I completed last summer at a non-profit in Vancouver, the executive director had extensive corporate experience both academically and professionally. He advised me to gain exposure to the corporate world so as to supplement my International Development because the non-profit world requires much interaction with corporate donors, and he thought it valuable to have knowledge in business to do so. On an academic level, I am eager to get my Master of Management post-graduation and wished to gain exposure to the corporate world to confirm my interest in the field. Thus, my learning objective of this internship was to take in as much information on the inner workings of a company, a goal I was confident would be attained through working for a start-up company. During the internship, I hoped to gain knowledge in and contribute to the development of the company鈥檚 branding and product. Moreover, the position required a data-driven strategy when conducting market research in the industry. In this respect I was able to apply the quantitative skills I have developed throughout my program to tangible projects. Ultimately, I was hoping to complete this internship to help bridge my post-graduation transition into the professional world whether in a corporate or non-profit sector.
Planned is a platform created to enable planners to scale by providing them with a marketplace of event spaces. They are striving to be a leader in the future of corporate event planning though their focus on a relentless, client-focused company that re-imagines, re-designs and re-engineers the way companies plan their events. Given the circumstances of COVID-19, the event industry suffered a major blow to their revenue; thus, my main task of this internship was to engage in business development of their brand and product both through North America and new international markets. This entailed my work in growing partnerships through calls to extend relationship with our partners.
My eight weeks working virtually was both an enriching professional experience and a challenge. Given that Planned is a new company, I was able to see the progression of the organization of the company from the beginning of Planned to present. For example, things such as the ways they communicated changed from emails to using Slack. They were very transparent about how young of a company they were and were open to suggestions from interns. Every Friday they would host something called a 鈥楧ownload鈥� in which interns would break off into brainstorming groups or use online brainstorming software to organize our ideas. We would then discuss each of the ideas and the following week the top ideas would be executed into tangible projects. This was a highlight of the internship as it was a time to collaborate and have the chance to make a visible impact in the way Planned was run. Further, this was a chance to interact with other interns in various departments and gain exposure to the projects they were working on that reached the pipeline process of my department. In other words, it was beneficial to me to see the operations of Planned through a macro-lens of the entire company rather than through my everyday micro-lens of my Onboarding department.
Regarding challenges of the internship, I did find the virtual format to be quite difficult and isolating at times. With the time difference of Vancouver from Montreal, I would start my day at 11:00am Montr茅al time which meant that I was missing out on three hours of previous communications between my team. To overcome this challenge, I communicated these concerns with the HR department who regularly checked in with the interns to see if we were satisfied with our workloads and a solution was promptly executed to ensure that I felt more connected to the team and that I had a more diverse workload.
I will not be receiving credit for this internship as I received credit for my internship that I completed last summer for my INTD499 course. Despite this, I do believe that this internship was valuable for me to gain familiarity with the logistics of running a start-up. I was able to see the mistakes that they have made and the solutions that have been applied to run a successful young company. I further had the chance to learn about product development and the marketing of these products, areas of which I had expressed interest at the beginning of my internship. Thus, the impact this internship had on my university experience was to provide me with insight on the corporate world and to help me decide if I wish to pursue business post-graduation. After completing the internship and confirming my interest in the corporate sphere, I am looking to get my Master of Management at UBC after graduating from my International Development degree this year.
I wish to express thanks to the Arts Student Employment Fund that funded my internship experience. I would not have been able to have taken on this internship without the funding that I received from them. These funds covered my living expenses this summer and I am very grateful to have had the weight of these expenses alleviated so that I could focus my summer on building on my professional skills and my resume.
Sincerely,
Lucy MacKinnon
