Brandon Edwards ’24 — First, I am grateful to the donors and the Center for Innovation, Business & Entrepreneurship (CIBE) at Wabash College for funding my summer internship. Also, I want to thank Associate Dean Roland Morin ’91, CIBE Senior Fellow Anthony Mendez ’20, and the Wabash Career Services Office for organizing and leading the Business Innovation Program (BIP). The program increased my business, sales, and interpersonal skills that will benefit me professionally. To Associate Dean Roland Morin ’91 and CIBE Senior Fellow Anthony Mendez ’20, thank you for actively guiding the conversations needed for it to run smoothly. I would also like to thank the team at Adorant Group for bringing in fellow interns Mason McCorkle ‘24 and Nick Pfledderer ‘23 for helping us grow into confident professionals. CEO Brian Mantel ’93 and Nick Winter ’21 allowed us to put forth the knowledge we had gained in Wabash to improve professional sales skills. Finally, I want to thank the participants and speakers hosted by the BIP for talking about their entrepreneurial experiences, leading informative case studies, and developing our business skills to enhance our experiences at Wabash and future careers.
This summer, I was fortunate enough to be an intern at Adorant Group. Adorant Group is a financial planning software used by advisors to grow their business books to free up valuable time. Our team did a variety of tasks in Adorant. For instance, we compiled customer research and wrote articles to help guide conversations with customers for Adorant. This involved gathering potential clients and researching their software and business intelligence. We cataloged our research into excel spreadsheets, utilizing skills learned through the BIP. My favorite part about my internship was being trained through the sales program to identify customer pain points. I learned the importance of finding solutions to problems, which prepared me for the cold calls we did in the second half of the internship.
Nevertheless, cold calls were challenging for me at first, but they enhanced my communication skills and what it takes to build rapport with strangers. We also wrote several articles to improve financial advisor performance for their users. Editing helped further my knowledge of how to write an informative business article. I want to thank CEO Brian Mantel ’93 for giving us valuable feedback and direction in our papers. All in all, my summer internship at Adorant Group has given me a lot of time and energy personally, and I appreciate their willingness to help me professionally.
