Weijie Shi ’14:  My internship search was not easy.  After sending out hundreds of resumes and getting hundreds of “No”’s for answers, my battle of fighting for my dream to break into finance fell into a quandary.  Fortunately, WP Global Partners offered me an internship at this critical time.  I am so grateful for this precious opportunity with the generous help and support from Mr. Xu ’10.

For the first time, I am allocated at WP Global’s New York Office, working with one Senior Partner, a Managing Director, and a Senior Vice President. Working in WP Global’s New York Office is a totally new and different experience from one that many previous interns had before.  As a private equity fund, WP Global Partners operate their business from two basic perspectives.  One is sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities, and the other is monitoring the current portfolio for their clients.

That being said, my job responsibilities involve two aspects.  On one hand, my daily job includes meeting with fund managers who come to WP Global to pitch their funds and taking meeting notes, researching the industries where the potential investments lie, and performing evaluations on target investments.  Aside from that, I write deal reviews for potential investments which contain a company’s performance as well as the general market and growth potential.

On the other hand, I take charge of updating financial metrics and terms for current investments in WP Global’s portfolio and cleaning up WP’s database on a daily basis. In addition, I participate in making WP’s pitch books and presentation PPTs by generating charts from data analysis.

Weijie Shi ’14 with Senior Vice President, Kumber Husain

Life after work is just as fantastic as work.  New York is an amazing place to explore. Besides wonderful restaurants, Broadway shows, and various concerts, meeting up with old friends, especially other Wabash men, is also great fun.

This internship has been definitely one of my best Wabash experiences so far.  With my great sincerity, I would like to thank Mr. Stanley Xu for offering the opportunity, Career Services, Mr. Scott Crawford, and the financial support of the Small Business Internship Fund.  I strongly encourage students who are interested in developing a career in finance to apply for this internship in the near future.

Hezekiah Eibert ’15:  This summer I am the Sustainability Intern for Wabash College, through Sodexo. To describe my position as quickly as possible, my job is to make Wabash green (environmentally friendly).

I started working right away this summer, with the first day of my internship being May the 6^th, and boy did I hit the ground running. Within the first two weeks, I had found over $6,000.00 in savings for the college, restructured our fallen bike rental program, and created a community service event for freshman orientation next year.  I haven’t stopped there. Tim Riley, Wabash’s ground manager, and I recently took a road trip to Ohio to visit Oberlin, Kenyon and Denison. Oberlin, being ranked fourth in the nation when compared to other colleges in terms of environmental friendliness, had a lot to show us.

From their 10 acre solar array to their state of the arc water and electricity monitoring system in all their buildings to their free store and so much more. From Kenyon we saw an impressive disposal system that removed liquid from the food and created a pulp like substance that is put into their compost, a campus wide electric usage monitoring system, a recycling facility, and electric golf carts being widely used. Denison held the biggest gem of them all, The Homestead. I didn’t want to leave. The off the grid living area is truly impressive, and to quote the Denison website “The Homestead is a living-learning experience unique among American colleges and universities. It is a student-run intentional community with a focus on ecological sustainability. Twelve students per semester live and work together in pursuit of a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle. Homesteaders also work to promote their projects, lifestyle, and ideals to non-members.” Along with the Homestead Denison held a rooftop solar array, a great campus garden, as well as their own recycling center.

Now, simply copying these amazing things from these other colleges would not work for us. Wabash is so wonderfully different from every other college in the nation and the longer I stay here the more I realize this. We are also spoiled when it comes to recycling. Unlike these three colleges that are leaders in sustainability that all have multi stream recycling, we have single stream. Simply put, this means that while they all have to separate each type of recyclable material, we only have to put all recyclable material in one bin. We have all the supplies to have a very successful program and we just need our Responsible Wabash men to step up to the plate and make a slight change to yield a large impact on our community and our world.

But back to what I’m doing. We are currently looking into electric golf carts and cars, restructuring our community garden (to raised beds), a solar roof for the Allen Center, a electricity monitoring system for our buildings (at least our newer ones), a bike rental system, a free store, and much more. I am so excited to be bringing these crucial changes to Wabash College and hopefully I’ll be able to leave a positive legacy behind and make some long standing changes. I’ll do my best to lay the ground work, but at the end of the day I need the Wabash community, students, staff and faculty alike, to stand together and help push the college into the future.

Live Ever Die Never, Wabash Always Fights,

Hezekiah Eibert…

Micah Chowning ’14:   New York’s Madison Avenue was firmly locked into advertising lore with the TV show Mad Men.    While the luster of the offices and the lusts of the lifestyles are embellished in the show, the fundamental premise of marketing is the same: speak to the individual.

Thanks to the Small Business Internship Fund, I have been on the Mad Ave this summer interning for a digital marketing firm, Wasabi Rabbit.  The nitty gritty of digital marketing in the modern age: Big Data.  Today is the age of social media and data—lots of both—and companies are only beginning to learn how to turn these areas into revenue.  There is tremendous potential in these tools; but marketers are still discovering the path from the data to the individual.

With the team in the conference room

My involvement at Wasabi Rabbit has been diverse.  My first order of business upon arrival was to immerse myself into Google Analytics, the Swiss Army Knife for website data.  With an account, Google will track website data such as unique visitors, visitor paths, click sources, time spent on pages, links, everything.  Its functions range from simple to complex.

I arrived in the midst of online campaign run by Wasabi Rabbit for its major client, Marketwired.  We needed to track which emails and ads generated site traffic, and which site visitors became sales leads.  With Facebook ads, website banner ads, Google search ads, emails, blog posts, and even postcards directing people to the site, there were many different aspects and items to consider.  Along with daily updating the number of unique visitors and goal conversions, I looked into the conversion rate for each day of the week, along with the click rate for each Tip Sheet Marketwired sent out via email.

Marketwired is in the midst of a rebranding, having acquired Sysomos and wanting to combine the Marketwire news service and the Sysomos social media listening tools into one distinct brand.  Hence, Marketwired.  Part of this process is combining two websites into one, and I’ve been responsible for listing the URLs and page names for the resource sections of both marketwire.com and sysomos.com.

Using Marketwired’s social media listening tools, Heartbeat and MAP, I’ve also been able to do research into social media conversations about Marketwired’s products and competitors’ products, along with finding reviews in blogs and tech sites.  While not NSA-level, both tools turn the buzz about products into distinct voices and allow the user to get a sense of what’s going on in the web.

Tim and Gina talk about the campaign in a spirited fashion

A few other research tasks involved more creativity than data analysis.  Tim Lyons ‘91, the managing director here at Wasabi Rabbit, was putting together a marketing proposal for a potential client that is involved in Alzheimer’s education; looking into the proposal’s different aspects and needs was eye-opening.  I’ve also researched the pros and cons of a business using Twitter’s Direct Messaging feature, along with topics relevant to social media and investor relations.

Additionally, the experience of the City has been another great element to the experience.  New York is, in one (overused) word, awesome.  The city crawls with energy, making sleep seem unnecessary and movement mandatory.  My days typically last from 6:30 AM to midnight.  There is always something to do, something to see, something to try.  It suffices to say that I’m on the lookout for a I♡NY shirt.

Jeff Been ’81, Meagen Agnew, Jacob Burnett ’15, Julia Leist Adams

Jacob Burnett ’15: Walking into the Legal Aid Society’s office in downtown Louisville, you read: “Our mission is to pursue justice for people in poverty,” on a hanging sign overlooking the inside of the office.

What better way to live humanely than to speak for those who have had their voices silenced? Here, at Legal Aid, we work to restore hope in every tangible and intangible sense. To speak more specifically, Legal Aid provides legal assistance, in matters of civil law, to low-income people in Jefferson and the 14 surrounding counties. Every year, Legal Aid assists more than 4,000 clients in civil matters with programs, clinics, preventative education, and legal representation.

On my first day, I read the 2011 and 2012 Litigation and Activities Docket that outlines the different programs Legal Aid offers with client accounts and success stories. Reading about domestic violence, slum lords, and pure legal abuse people face brought tears to my eyes. These clients try to navigate in an unfamiliar and confusing legal world with no direction; however, there is hope. Legal Aid acts as a safe haven to help guide people to reach the most beneficial results for them and their families.

My work at Legal Aid encompasses development and administration. I help the Director of Development, Julia, and the Director of Administration, Meagen, with matters that pertain to funding Legal Aid and managing marketing or other administrative duties. Most notably, I have worked on the “Justice for All,” Annual Campaign to raise $300,000

that will fund Legal Aid and its many services. Furthermore, I have helped research and write grants that will fund programs that help people every day. I have worked with my bosses to help organize and research past information relating to funding partners and donations that will help projects in the future. Julia and I will design and assemble the 2012 Annual Report that Legal Aid distributes to the community and funding partners that outlines the effects Legal Aid has made in the community. With Meagen, I compiled and updated a media directory list, social media posts, and an e-newsletter. In all, I have valued every opportunity with these departments because it helps me understand how non-profits effectively operate. The projects I have worked on taught me valuable Excel, writing, researching, and managing skills.

Because of my work with many projects, I have been exposed to great insight and unique experiences.

One highlight of my internship occurred on the 35^th floor of thePNCTower at the Bingham Greenebaum Doll law office that overlooks all of downtownLouisville for the first meeting of the “Justice for All” Campaign Committee. I sat in my seat as 15 of the most distinguished and accomplished lawyers inLouisville grabbed Panera box lunches and sat around the table. I acted as a fly on the wall as the committee discussed and outlined the strategy to accomplish their goal. Before and afterwards, I happily introduced myself to all the attorneys around the table; it was a humbling experience. As I left the office that day, Jeff told me, “You know, you got to experience a unique opportunity today. Not every intern gets to sit at a table with some of the most successful lawyers in Kentucky.”

Another highlight found itself in the second floor court room of the Hall of Justice. I sat in the jury box with a paralegal from Legal Aid, Brenda Bacon (what a name!), and got to watch Eviction Court proceed. Afterwards, Brenda, a known veteran of the county court house, introduced me to judges and attorneys she knew throughout the building. Since then, I have attended numerous Eviction Court hearings, domestic violence hearings, motion hours, Legal Aid clinics, and acted as a court runner for the office. I have sat in on client interviews for divorces and wills. Attorneys have allowed me to read their legal case documents, taught me about court and paperwork processes, and gave me valuable career and law school advice. Essentially, I have been immersed in practical and hands-on legal knowledge that I wouldn’t have obtained in law school.

Apart from the work I do, this opportunity has allowed me to interact with amazing people. The entire staff is fun, laid back, and extremely welcoming; they love their jobs and understand how rewarding this work can be. Because of this office environment, I have enjoyed everyday at the office.

Legal Aid saves lives, restores hope, and pursues justice. Without the Small Business Fund, I wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity to witness the practice of ruthless empathy. I would like to thank my bosses Julia, Meagen, Jeff Been ’81, his partner Eric Graniger, and every member of the Legal Aid Society. The work done in this office and many others throughout the country defines what it means to live a life of purpose.

Five months ago when I started my internship hunting, I did not imagine that I could spend this summer in San Francisco. Thanks to the Small Business Internship Fund, Mr. Khurram Tahir ’01, Mr. Scott Crawford, and Career Services, I could gain the opportunity to intern with PROFUSA, Inc., a Silicon Valley startup company. When I confirmed my internship offer in April, I knew it would be the best summer I could ever have. The first month of my internship just proved my thought—I have never been this busy and happy. Although I have to wake up at 7:00 a.m. in order to catch the 7:30 a.m. Bart and the bus, I cannot wait to start my work every day.

As an Operations Intern, I spend most of my time working together with my mentor, Mr. Bruce Smith, who is the Director of Operations at PROFUSA. PROFUSA is a biomedical company with a concentration on continuous glucose monitoring. Like many other startup companies in the Silicon Valley, the PROFUSA team is science and technology oriented—more than 70% of the team members hold Ph.D. degree. While most of our team members are accomplishing goals in the labs, Bruce and I are working on accounting, finance, human resources, and other tasks on the operation side in our office.

One of the biggest advantages working in a startup company is to get a lot of exposures in many various tasks. My first project at PROFUSA was internal audit. By going through the expense reports, invoices, and bills of the company, I got to know the company quickly from a financial aspect. My second task was to set up a standardized human resources management system. Together with my mentor Bruce, I created a recruiting manual and a package of human resources management documentations. Recently I am working on monthly close and payroll with Bruce. When we finish the monthly close, I will spend more time on my long-term projects, which include creating an internal database and looking for a more efficient way for PROFUSA to document all the files. I have also done several other small projects, including creating a company organizational and a corporate biography.

I am thankful for the liberal arts education at Wabash. I feel confident because I am well equipped with the knowledge I learned from the accounting courses, economics courses, and the computer science courses that I took at Wabash. I would like to encourage my fellow classmates who are interested in entrepreneurship and startup companies to take advantage of the Business Sequence program at Wabash.

I want to thank Mr. Khurram Tahir ’01, an investor of PROFUSA, for bringing this great opportunity to Wabash. I also want to thank Mr. Scott Crawford for creating the connection between Wabash students and alumni in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last but not least, I would like to thank Jackson Ding ’11, for giving me advice on my career path and hosting me at his place during the first week when I arrived in the city. Without the support from Wabash alumni and Career Services, I could never have this great experience.

Matt Kaczkowski ’13 – This summer I was lucky to have the opportunity to be an intern for the NBA basketball division of  Octagon Sports Marketing, one of the largest athlete management firms in the world and I wanted to share how my Wabash training and experience helped me to get the job and to have a great experience.

Since Octagon is an immense company with upwards of 800 staff in 22 countries across 6 continents, securing summer internships is very competitive.  I had to write essays, analyze a sports marketing case and present my conclusions to a panel of executives in Washington DC, . . . just to get the job!  Little did I know, I would face competition from students from schools such as Northwestern, Georgetown, University of Michigan, USC, Penn State and many others.  Fortunately, my Wabash training enabled me to think critically and communicate effectively.  I knew there would be stiff competition but I kept fighting.  Even though there were 580 intern candidates all from bigger schools, I was lucky to be their FIRST hire for the Octagon 2012 internship program.

As an intern in the basketball division, I had a variety of opportunities.  The company afforded me the chance to interact on a daily basis with Octagon clients such as Wesley Matthews (Portland Trailblazers), Ryan Anderson (New Orleans Hornets), Landry Fields (Toronto Raptors), David West (Indiana Pacers), and Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors).  My role in the department involved draft preparation, statistical analysis and coordination for Octagon rookie clients and marketing/endorsement partnerships for current NBA players.  I helped coordinate the Octagon rookies’ schedules of workouts and summer leagues.  I provided marketing ideas for both Matthews and Curry that will be enacted later this year with a number of companies in Portland, OR and Raleigh, NC respectively.

This summer gave me a great perspective on the sports industry.  The chance to observe and work with basketball agents was amazing.  Octagon held a weekly speaker series in addition to a couple of team projects that helped me get a feel for a few different areas of the company.  I was given tremendous insight into the hiring process, partnerships research, and logistics that go into the sports world.  I had a fantastic time and I’m grateful for the experience and exposure.

The Octagon experience allowed me to put my Wabash liberal arts education to work in the sports world.  The strengths of communication skills, empirical skills and critical thinking gleaned from my work at Wabash allowed me to be successful in my work this summer.   I owe my success to all of my instructors, coaches and the folks at Career Services who helped me at various steps in my journey.  You don’t realize how well Wabash prepares you until you get out in the world.

Josh Jones ’14 – For most of my summer, I’ve worked as an intern at the Schroeder Center for Career Development at Wabash College. During this time, I’ve learned many techniques to help improve not only my job-seeking skills but also to help me help others in this area as well. Throughout this time, my partner and I have worked on many projects from organizing the Community Fair to exploring a Wabash-owned area of land known as “The Patch” and figuring out ways that this area can be used by students.

In the first week of work, I went through Peer Career Advisor training.  This training was an important piece of my internship experience, as it not only helped me familiarize myself with what Career Services offers, but also help me learn to help others with resume editing and advice. One problem that the Career Services building runs across is getting students involved with the programs that we offer. So, part of my job this summer was coming up with some ideas that could help bring more people into the office throughout the school year. One of the projects that we did to help this was to create a Pinterest page dedicated to informing students of what we offer along with other useful tidbits of information.

The largest project of the summer by far had to be organizing the Community Fair. Each year, Career Services holds the fair in order to help both new students and returning students get acquainted with some of the businesses that Crawfordsville has to offer. Each year around 75 businesses attend and nearly 600 students show up to see the fair. In order to get the businesses’ attention, my partner and I traveled throughout Crawfordsville to find businesses that would be interested in being a part of the Community Fair. Since I am not from around Crawfordsville, I was baffled at how many businesses there were in Crawfordsville. For more information about the upcoming event, go to www.wabash.edu/careers/fair.

As part of my internship as a project and event management intern at the Schroeder Center for Career Development at Wabash College, I took the opportunity to plan an externship with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. The officer who escorted me on my externship was Patrolman Leon Essig, a police officer of eleven years. I plan on pursuing a career somewhere in the field of law enforcement after I graduate from Wabash College and I wanted to take this opportunity to see some of the responsibilities that a career in law enforcement would entail.

This internship has been worthwhile knowing that the work I put in this summer will help both current and future students with their careers and hopefully their Wabash experience as well. The skills that I have developed will prove to be very beneficial to me and the wonderful people that I have met throughout my internship have helped improve the way that I think about Wabash. I would like to thank the Schroeder Center for Career Development for hiring me as a summer intern.  I have enjoyed working with everyone here and look forward to seeing what becomes of the plans that we have though out the year.

Josh Jones

Wabash College ‘14

Terrance Pigues ‘14 –As I shake hands with alumnus Tim Lyons ’91 in the lobby of where my internship is located, I can feel that something isn’t right.

We walk into the office of Wasabi Rabbit and what I originally interpreted as a room of future coworkers laughing and enjoying their job, quickly became room filled with silence and greetings. I couldn’t put my finger on what this eerie feeling was that I received. Suddenly, my boss invited to his office and shut the door. He said, “You know Terrance, you don’t need to wear a suit. It’s summertime in New York City…”. Finally a sign of relief came over me and all I could think about getting back to Scott Crawford’s office to fuse at him about how his work-attire policy made me an outcast on my first day on the job! But as soon as I had mastered the professional New York summertime style, the magic at the office began to unfold.

This internship has taken me for an adventure from the very first day on the job, and I’m not done yet. After I got the chance to meet everyone at the office and briefings were done (in reference to what I would be doing for the next couple of weeks), my duties as an account executive intern were underway.

With an understanding of what I was supposed to do and a good ole’ Wabash alumnus as my boss, Tim threw me into the world of marketing/advertising head-first to work with him in the digital world.

Getting Into It

My job started in full swing! There was no time to ease my way into the workload because a lot needed to be done and we were the ones responsible for getting it done. As you can imagine, the first week was rough. And it wasn’t just the workload that made it so either. My internship started mid-summer because I was completing a study-abroad program in Shangahi, China. Upon my arrival back to the US, I was severely jet-lagged, but that didn’t stop me from going straight to New York from China. Every day of the first week I was in bed by 10pm. It was also brought to my attention that I wasn’t the only intern in the office as well that I was one of three interns here! This really pushed me to speed up my learning curve; I didn’t want to slow down progress because I was the “new guy”. Everything  my boss discussed with me I googled, so I could learn what he was talking about and  learn how to do it. I stayed later than all other employees my first week and spent that time reading information about the digital marketing industry  and bringing myself up to speed with everyone else. I reviewed client info with my boss and even learn how to use certain programs that he used to help understand how users would interact with websites (user interface) in a few days. We then put my new found abilities to work and developed presentations to show to clients all in the first week! To top things off, my boss and I enjoyed an eleven hour workday , my first Friday, to finish up some documents that needed to be completed before the weekend. This was my introduction to New York City…

The CEO wants to meet.

My second week on the job, John Mustin (the CEO of Wasabi Rabbit) returns from a meeting in Washington, DC. I had already had my workload nearly full to capacity but then I receive a Skype chat from the CEO which read, “let’s meet in my office in 15 minutes.” He called that meeting to explain what he wanted me to do for the company during my internship. In addition to already working with my boss and his clients, now the CEO wanted me to help update their company website with wide array of new information. He also has me taking the lead to plan a small conference for Wasabi Rabbit, which will take place in the fall. That task is the easiest because I can use my skills developed over time as the PR Chair for the Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies. However, for the rest of the action items, I would be putting in some serious work!

My boss ditches me!

A couple weeks in, I learn that my boss has a vacation coming up very soon. After asking him whether or not I would receive a vacation and being told no, Tim explains to me that I would still be meeting with his clients and finalizing some variables for him. And so I did. Tim’s second in command and myself met with the clients this week and finalized everything that he needed of us while he is away. And I’ve still been working on multiple projects as well. He won’t be disappointed when he returns.

“Concrete jungle where dreams are made of…”

Thanks to the Small Business Internship Fund, being in New York has definitely been a fun experience. The people are always moving. The city is bustling. And most importantly, I’m enjoying the opportunities here. I used the career services mentor link to locate alumni and meet with them as well because no Wabash funded internship should is complete without networking with post-graduate Wallies! I enjoyed an awesome birthday and even got treated by a “Danni” too. All around,  I’ve experienced an awesome city with a lot of diversity.  And who can forget about standing in Time Square, starring at a giant poster of the epic movie, “The Dark Knight Rises”. Currently, I still a few weeks left so I should probably get back to work while my boss is on vacation because secretly, “I’m running the show.”

Terrance Pigues ‘14