My name is Liam Thompson and I am currently working as an intern for Bridge Builder Strategies based out of Indianapolis for the summer. At Bridge Builders, we are focused on creating a measurable impact in our community. We aim to do this by tackling someof society’s most pressing issues in various areas such as poverty, education and more. Currently, I am working with a team in order to research and develop actionable steps in order to improve experiential education for college students and beyond. We are working both with Wabash and various other institutions in order to better understand and develop experiential learning opportunities as students prepare for what lies beyond college. As we are transitioning from the research to action phase, some of my duties involve identifying specific areas which we can target to improve as well as establishing contacts to do so.
Throughout my experience so far, I have learned how to effectively distribute research tasks amongst a team in order to come to a better understanding of a topic. I believe my abilities to find important and relevant information within my research as well as how to effectively communicate what I have learned have improved greatly in the process. Another extremely valuable set of skills and habits I have begun to establish involves how to effectively approach a potential client. There are many subtleties within both the best way to address a client and in how proposals are composed which play heavily into what kind of response one may receive. These are all skills I plan to use in whatever professional endeavors I take on during and after Wabash.
I have also learned many extremely beneficial skills in my experiences with the CIBE Business Innovation Program this summer. One session which I found to be quite applicable was the financial bootcampwith recent alumnus Zack Carlwho taught us several skills from using excel to what finance is in general. I did not have a great knowledge of finance before and feel much more comfortable with the idea of it now and plan to use what I learned in both my personal and professional life. I have already found the skills we learnedin excel to be useful in my work at Bridge Builders in keeping records of potential clients organized in order to help the business run more smoothly.
