Amidst the flashing lights, enormous billboards, and crowds of tourists in the heart of New York City's Times Square rests the Reuters building, the setting of my summer internship at Thomson Reuters. I knew relatively little about the company before starting there, and from my conversations with peers, it seems as if I was not alone. Thomson Reuters was formed in 2008 with the merger of Thomson (known for its footprint in financial services, market data, educational tools, among other things) and Reuters (known for its global, unbiased news coverage). While the companies shared a common bond in their passion for disseminating vital information to the world's professionals, there were a lot of synergies to be made before Thomson Reuters would truly come together as one entity. Even today, the growing pains are still visible, with many aspects of the company still not fully integrated. That said, Thomson Reuters is now arguably the largest information provider in the world, rivaling Bloomberg in the financial markets and the Associated Press in the media space.
My internship is in the Strategy group, which I also knew nothing about as I entered the building on June 1st. I now know that the Strategy division is a small thinktank that reports directly to the CFO, evaluating growth opportunities, acquisition targets, and overall company strategy for each year. And it's definitely exciting work. I was very pleasantly surprised to be working on such "big picture" assignments as a mere undergraduate intern. In fact, I can't even get into detail about my work because most of it involves initiatives that 99% of Thomson Reuters employees know nothing about, pretty cool in my opinion.
But what surprised me most about my first few days as an intern were the people. When I found out that 3 of my bosses went to Yale, Stanford, and Harvard respectively, and my fellow strategy interns were undergrads at Duke, Brown, and Yale, I was pretty intimidated. But I was immediately amazed to find how cool, friendly, helpful, and down to earth everyone was without exception. All working in a big open conference room together, the interns have formed a pretty close-knit group, and each day we have grown closer as we work together on assignments, ideas, and even pranks. After work on Tuesday, the entire strategy team was treated to the ultimate team building exercise, a night out at New York's ultimate ping pong lounge, SPIN. That is a must see for any ping ping fan/player.
Thus far the company has certainly lived up to my expectations. Overall, my assignments have been pretty interesting as well. Without getting into detail, I've been doing a lot of PowerPoint work, which seems to be a theme in strategy, to create slide decks as part of presentations that will eventualy reach the CEO's desk. However interesting or boring the subject matter, it's exciting to create such meaningful work at this stage in the game. In the coming weeks, I have a few more goals:
1) To meet as many influential people as possible and develop a large company-wide network
2) To get involved in the Reuters Media side of the company, especially in such a dynamic media landscape as we see now
I look forward to keeping you posted.
Alex Weiss, BBA
No comments:
Post a Comment