During the past five weeks, I have had the wonderful opportunity to intern with the BIP (Business Immersion Program) through the CIBE program. On June 18th, my 15 colleagues and I had the pleasure of taking a day trip up to Chicago, where we met many amazing alumni who gave us great career advice and made for an overall amazing day of networking. The Company that really stood out to me was Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC. Alumni Josh Nicholson and Matt Page, who were kind enough to take us around the office and talk to us about Private Equity. All in all, Chicago was a great experience. We also had the opportunity to visit Eli Lilly, which was an amazing experience. We had the pleasure of sitting in and listening to numerous different alumni tell us what they do inside of such a prestigious company.
I also learned a lot of amazing career experience through this internship. There were two pieces of advice that I learned through this time that will stick with me throughout my career. The first tip was to never say no and take the risk. This was preached to me by many people. Some of them failed, but they all learned from those mistakes, found a way to improve on them, and it all worked out for the better in the end. The other advice that I received is something that is preached to us here but some people like myself did not take full advantage of it until this internship. And this is: networking is one of the best things you can do. Talking to the people that us students are networking with was very eye-opening because they were all once in our spots trying to find their way in the world as well.
For the next group of guys who will come through this internship,, I want you all to know that it is a very insightful one if you get the most out of it. How do you do that? Well, I would make sure that you have a notebook ready to take notes so that you can review it after every session. Also, one thing that Cassie Hagan preached to us was that you need to do your background research. Know who is taking time out of their day to talk to you and maybe even learn a fact or two about them.
Finally, I want to give a huge shoutout to Cassie Hagan and Matthew Brooks for all of their hard work to make this internship possible!
