James Despain ’22 — First, I want to thank the Dill Fund, the Wabash Career Services Office, and the Center for Innovation, Business & Entrepreneurship (CIBE) at Wabash College for making my summer internship a reality. This summer, I interned with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a Demand Generation Intern at their headquarters in Seattle, WA. AWS is the most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform that helps customers lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster. The experience I had working with AWS gave me the hands-on experience to deliver better results to customers while diving deep into my ideas at the same time.
The internship gave us different projects in which we utilized the skills we developed to deliver key points of data and improvements to help customers migrate through the cloud. For one project, I created and presented business outcomes for a publicly-traded cybersecurity company where revenue growth accelerated by 8% and increased the total obtainable market by 17% over three years. In particular, one project revolved around a made-up company that wants to move to the cloud. I was assigned to deliver a mock presentation that helped explain the benefits of moving to the cloud, compared their current infrastructure with AWS services, and presented an AWS architecture that solved their needs and cut current costs. Our final project provided me with hands-on experience owning core demand generation responsibilities, including researching accounts, executing strategic prospecting/outreach, and engaging in meaningful conversations with AWS prospects to build a high-quality pipeline and acquire new customers.
During the first month of my internship, I earned my AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner certification. The certification gave me the knowledge to better understand the beneficial tools that AWS offers to better the experience for their customers while on their journey working with AWS services and solutions. Furthermore, I worked alongside Solutions Architects at AWS to build out a mock architecture structure of AWS services where Wabash College could implement cloud computing to deliver computing power, databases, storage, applications, and other IT resources. The cloud-based architecture helps reduce IT costs while improving security and reliability for students and staff at the College.
All in all, the opportunities that Wabash College has granted me and prepared me for are something that no other institution could have afforded me. Without the help of the Dill Fund, the Wabash Carer Services Office, and the CIBE, I would not have been able to experience this opportunity!
