At the Turn
Note: This is an entry I wrote for my Kellogg Student Diary, which was a student life blog I kept as a student at Northwestern. Now that I’ve graduated, I’m copying my entries to my personal blog to preserve my writings. You can read all of the entries by viewing the category Kellogg Student Diaries.
The summer always seems to go by too quickly and as August comes to an end, I’m starting to see some of my Kellogg classmates back in Evanston, and it’s really exciting to start preparing for our second year while catching up on our summers.
I spent my summer vacation working for a small chemical company in the western suburbs of Chicago. While I didn’t have to go through the hassle of paying two rents, or having to move for 10 weeks, I did have to suffer the ignominy of a 30-mile commute (each way!) every day. Luckily I used the time to catch up on a few albums I hadn’t listened to in years.
The internship was very exciting and gave me the opportunity to really use everything I’ve done at Kellogg. The company is heavily involved with the pharmaceutical industry and has developed a chemical which will make it cheap for alternative energy plants to operate much more efficiently. (Because of the nature of this project, I’m purposely being very vague).
Because the company is very new to the alternative energy industry, I essentially studied the industry for ten weeks and developed a business plan for this company. I studied government publications, academic papers, financial reports, and talked to internal experts to develop a list of potential clients, a pricing strategy, potential competitive responses, and a financial model.
Given my background as an engineer, this internship turned out to be an ideal opportunity to apply everything I’ve learned at Kellogg. My work dealt with the business of going to market with a new technological innovation, and my deliverables had a strong blend of marketing, finance, and strategy.
