artSFashion: a colombian perspective on San Francisco's arts, design and cultural activities

Hi All!

My name is Camila Salamanca, I am a first year MBA, I am from Colombia and I will do my internship in Taproot Foundation in San Francisco.

The Taproot Foundation is an organization that enables business professionals to donate their skills to help nonprofits with their marketing, human resources, strategy Management, among others. The idea behind this purpose is that most organizations tackling social problems don’t have access to the marketing, design, technology, management or strategic planning resources they need to succeed and that big corporations have. Without this talent, few are able to have their intended impact on critical issues like the environment, health and education. Thus, Taproot wants to provide them with access to those resources.

During my internship I will be a consultant for Taproot, helping them measure the impact they have had on the non-profits they have been helping so far.

With this internship, I expect to sharpen my business and strategic thinking and acquire useful skills for my future career as a consultant, but I also my leadership skills by having access to responsibilities that I might not have by working in larger organizations. Most importantly, by interacting and learning from new business leaders in the public private partnerships world I will expand my consulting experience to the non-profit sector in the US, which will allow me to build a wider network and help me understand and learn about successful public/partnership models used in the US that could be replicated later in a developing country setting.

I am nervous about really achieving my goals and provide a high quality work to the organization. Also, I will be working by myself in this project, so I am hopping I will still be able to have interaction with other members of the organization and receive as much support as possible.

I am very exited about learning new things, interacting and meeting new people, and contributing to a better society. But also, I am very exited about living in San Francisco. In fact, I will use my time and experiences in this city to write a blog on topics that are of great interest to me such as arts, culture and fashion. So, stay tuned, and wait to read in the next posts my Colombian perspective on artSFashion: a Colombian perspective on arts, design and culture in San Francisco!

Wrap-up and Final Presentatoin

Finally I have reached the end of my internship. This weekend, I am packing up all the things preparing to go back. In some sense, I miss Ann Arbor, but in others I miss Cupertino. Last Friday, I had a wrap-up meeting with my manager. Although my intern ends this coming week, since he is leaving for a business trip we had wrap-up a week before. I was told that overall my work was good. But Apple's recruiting system is not like other hi-tech companies, giving offer right at the end of internship. So I will have to wait for some time.


This week, I will have a final presentation on Thursday. I will report to my boss's boss boss, and some other staff related to my scope of work. On the same day, I will have another meeting set-up to expalin about my works so that someone here can follow-up those. Also, after all things are done, I am finally going to have a conference call with my boss to get feedback on my overall performance. I also have to give Apple a feedback about my intern experiences.


Overall, Apple's internship program seems to be very much organized, with diverse programs that interns can take advantage of. Although every people was busy, since I was assigned a manager and iBuddy, I could get as many information as I could, of course on the condition that I communicate with them in an efficient way. Besides work related stuff, there are lot's of extracurricular activities. Intern field trip to winery and SF baseball game, executive speaker series, department outing, meeting with senior managers and previous interns, lots of welcome/farewell parties and so on.
(Picture on right: Apple Corporate Games)

As a person having internship here, I am sure that future high-tech guys put Apple as their first priority intern place. You can work lots of smart Apple people, talk with them about their thoughts, sometimes see Steve Jobs at the cafeteria, sometime meet Woz and take picture with him, and also enjoy the beautiful weather at the west coast! Your experience here all depends on how you prepare and how you do at Apple!

Wrap up and final presentation

My last two weeks went by quickly as I wrapped up my workstream on the project and completed finishing touches to my deliverables. My work was focused on organization design for the client’s corporate communications department. I detailed out roles and responsibilities, assigned specific activities and helped the client identify hiring requirements. I realigned the reporting structure to enable greater focus on brand building and communication through the corporate website. I introduced the client to a methodical and rigorous approach to organization design and my framework became very popular with the management.

I feel satisfied with my contribution to the project. First, governance was a significant piece of the overall engagement and I had full ownership of developing the model. Second, I worked beyond scope to build frameworks for organization design, which led to the expansion of strategy consulting work. Finally, the governance model and organization design went through multiple discussions with the client and therefore was accepted for implementation. My mentor and buddy on the project played a great role in making this a success. His guidance and support throughout the summer gave me the confidence to go over and beyond my mandate.

The internship wrapped up with a 20-minute final presentation to the leadership of Strategy & Transformation (S&T) practice at IBM. It was great to see the immense variety of projects the interns had worked on. The leaders Saul Berman and Ron Frank provoked thought and articulated insights to build upon the work presented by the team. The final presentations added immense learning to my already rich summer.

Huge credits for making my summer so rewarding go to the lead MBA recruiter who got behind the nascent program with a great amount of personal commitment. With great persistence she influenced the leadership to staff us on the right projects, provide the necessary resources and participate in sessions. Most of all, she was warm and personable and wanted each of us to succeed. I look forward to working with her

The Final Countdown at Harley-Davidson

Three more days to go, and then I’m done with my internship at Harley-Davidson! I cannot believe that 10 weeks passed by so fast, and I’ll be headed back to Ann-Arbor in less than a week. It has been an incredible experience and I’ve learned so much. To all of you interested in general management, I’d highly recommend applying to Harley-Davidson’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) during your internship recruitment. It is probably one of the best rotational programs I have come across, and to add to that, the company is a great place to work in.

Well, I’m sure that a small part of why I am gushing so much about my internship experience is due to my visit to Sturgis, the largest annual motorcycle rally in the US. I am immensely grateful to my project sponsor for giving me the opportunity to go to the rally. It was probably the most memorable experience of my internship – the sight of all the die-hard motorcycling fans, and especially Harley-Davidson fans was quite something!

Harley-Davidson had a custom bike ride-in show at Sturgis, where bikers who had customized their bikes could ride in on their bikes and display them at our booth. Employees of Harley-Davidson then award the best bikes in various categories such as model families etc. It was fascinating to watch how much everyone there had personalized their bikes – and this gave me some good insights for my project, whose focus is to develop a long-term personalization strategy for Harley-Davidson. The picture here shows one of the customized bikes at the ride-in show.



The area around Sturgis is very scenic and most of the bikers who go to Sturgis go for a ride along Spearfish Canyon or to Mt. Rushmore. My project sponsor was kind enough to take me on his Road Glide Ultra for the most memorable ride of my life (so far!) along Spearfish Canyon. The winding roads and sights of streams and lakes on the way amidst lush green trees make for a very delightful experience. The picture here will illustrate what I am talking about.



All in all, this has been a challenging and rewarding internship experience. I really hope that I get to come back, but if not, it was still worthwhile as I learned so much. Again, I highly recommended the program for everyone interested in general management and for all you Harley-Davidson enthusiasts out there. Ride safely!

Finale

Hello everyone,

This is it! My 2 months summer internship is over now. Time does fly by.... I am sad that I have to say good bye to this great experience. However, during the internship, I had a great time with two other MBA interns. Even though each has different personality, we have overcome humps. Each member respects and listens the others. Most of all, we became great friends. I hope that this relationship lasts forever. I also had a great time with co-workers. I do really appreciate their helps and insights. I pray that our project result contributes to the company's future strategy. Here are some points that I want to go over.

1) Final presentation
We ended up having more than 150 pages of powerpoint slides. Well, we had to shrink those into 10 pages. We almost spent 2 entire days just for shrinking. After strenuous works, we finally had a presentation in front of entire strategy team. Even though our result was not super creative, it was solid enough to satisfy our audience. I do still remember their sharp questions. Trying to persuade others was not easy.

2) Final hang-out
About 15 MBA interns got together for the last farewell party. Everyone was tired but satisfied with their works and friendship, which we made during last 2 months. We reminisced from the day one of the internship orientation to the first farewell party for early leavers who had shorter projects. We also shared about favorite Korean foods and hated ones too. Good bye my friends!

3) Lessons
In-class learning is not going to work 100% in real work place. We needed to adjust what MBA has taught us mightily and, at the same time, to keep persuading co-workers. Yes, this was not a easy task, but this experience itself was another great learning opportunity.

Thank you very much for your reading! It is time to go home!! See you in AA!!

byung

What I didn’t do

(MBA, Amazon)

These days I was discussing with another Rosser what was the most valuable point of the internship. In doing so I had to go through an exercise of exploring all the positive points and picking only one. This is unfair with the other points but is a good exercise. Among the positive points I can highlight the city, the group of interns, the learning and the company itself. I have already mentioned the first couple points on a previous post so I’ll focus on the company and the main point.

It is very exciting to be part of a company that is making history. Amazon has now over $25bi in annual revenues and is still growing at over 40% a year. Not many other companies, if any, have done the same. It is definitely changing the face of the Retail. And being part of this transformation is an invaluable opportunity. There is yet a more propounding transformation Amazon is causing: the way we transfer knowledge, through e-books.

But among all, I believe that the most valuable point of my internship is this bad taste I now have in my mouth. I have now this inquietude for knowing what impact I’m going to cause in the world. Recently, I have seen the speech Jeff Bezos delivered to Princeton graduates . I learned a little bit more about his trajectory and I was profoundly uncomfortable to learn he started Amazon when he was 30. He speaks about choices and leaves us to think about what choices are we making. Jeff was able to able to impact the world twice (the face of retail and the e-books revolution) and who dares to doubt he could do it again?

If I can point out only one positive aspect of my internship, it’s definitely going to be the uneasiness I am left with. Yes, I have made new friends, yes I have enjoyed the city, yes I have learned a lot. All of this is very valid. But the best of all is what I haven’t done… yet!

Dress for Success

In one of my past posts I talked about the importance of dressing for the job you want. In this video I talk about dress in the office and how to tie 2 different types of ties. Feel free to email me with any questions about how to dress in the office.

Also the music is a little louder than I wanted but the song is "Words of Wisdom" by Hoodie Allen. He is the first artist I managed when I started my business Invite Only Management, LLC, and he is really starting to get popular so make sure to check out his music.

Winding Down!

Its amazing fast the summer program's gone that I can’t believe it’s all coming to an end this week. I presented my summer project to a team of hard core bankers and got very good reviews. Seems they were impressed by my understanding of the strategic rationale of the deal I analyzed (I wonder why I didn't take up the Corp Strategy offer I got instead, maybe I’d have aced it). At this stage in the program, the vast majority of my fellow interns are obsessed over who'd be receiving an offer from which group. Funny how your perspectives change: I have finally realized that contrary to my enthusiastic first post in this blog, I don't want to spend the next four years building models and prepping presentations in the concrete jungle that is NY. So much for mastering the universe - I'm now quite relaxed and taking things in my stride and trying to savor these last days. I spent a good chunk of last week networking with various people here at, including having an hour-long debate with a Managing Director on the merits and demerits of Obamacare (aka healthcare reform bill). Of course I was the unyielding liberal while he played the role of the rational free market advocate.

I'll be having my end of period review on Wednesday and I look forward to receiving all the superlative comments on my performance on the second half (yeah right). However the real treat would be the freedom to explore NY for a few days afterwards and hopping on a plane to Atlanta with a couple of friends before deciding whether to go back to AA for more learning (just kidding).

Let me closeout my participation in this blog by offering some tidbits of advice to incoming MBAs: if you do find yourself in a generalist Investment Banking summer internship program, bond quickly with the very first group you work with, be flexible in your group preferences (I was not, for personal reasons) and spend a boatload of time with as many people in your group as you can. May the force be with you!

P.S. Kindly forgive any typos you see in this post..... I'm typing on my iPhone keyboard and needless to say, my thumbs are quite arthritic now.

How to do a Good Internship?

Again, time flew and I have only three weeks left until the end of my internship. Most of my projects are now at the final stage. There were several things that went on well, but also several others that I feel more could have been done. All these will be an asset for me in preparing for my full time job search. I also got some feedback after my seventh week, which was really a valuable one. Here are some of my recommendations while doing internship.

First, before coming for the internship it would help very much if you have a high-level plan of what you will do during internship. For example, you can plan some networking lunches with people at Apple or even some other people at bay area high-tech companies. You can also plan to write an intern diary to track what/how you are doing to improve yourself every week. As for me, I memorized some things that I should do or shouldn't do, but I didn't write a daily intern diary. But I guess when you write one it will definitely help you.

Second, try to understand the industry so that you can communicate well throughout doing your project. Although you are working for specific company, while doing work your knowledge on the industry helps dealing with other employees at the company. They will know that you are prepared and passionate about what you are doing at work.

Third, as a perspective of balancing your work and life, I suggest you plan to enjoy your weekend. Sometimes, intern life can make you get stressed a lot. Especially for me who is an international student, I was stressed while communicating since I am not a native speaker. Especially for international students, conference call seems to be the hardest communication you have to overcome to communicate well in a US company.

Anyway I hope good luck to all of the interns!

I will come back for more

One feels a strange mix of emotion at the end of an intense summer internship. A feeling of relief as work winds down combined with a tinge of reluctance at putting a pause on newly formed professional relationships. Would I return full time to Credit Suisse?

Of the myriad factors to consider when choosing a full time job, the strongest pull to join Credit Suisse would be the people. Throughout the summer, I have received help and friendship from many bankers in CS. They have been open and honest with advice, providing important insight into the ins and outs of an investment banker's life. Not only has everyone in the office been polite and kind, they have taken the time to teach me so much about the financial industry. Their amiability alone confirms that the working environment will be a pleasant and conducive one.

As for the nature of the work, we have all learned about job satisfaction in our MO classes. Task significance, autonomy and task variety make for vital intrinsic motivation. Investment banking offers all of these. First, you are staffed on multiple projects at once. We work on M&A deals, IPO launches, follow-on offerings and pitches. We also have to prioritize and manage our time efficiently so that deadlines on multiple projects are met. It is altogether challenging and stimulating. Task significance is a given. All projects represent significant milestones in a company's life cycle - bankers advise on important strategic and financial decisions and get the chance to mingle with the CEOs and CFOs of billion-dollar institutions. One couldn't have a more satisfying out-of-college experience.

All in all, it has been an inspiring and privileged summer. As a college student with minimal work experience, the opportunity to see and learn from industry experts has been mind-blowing.

So the answer to the question, is yes.

Internship done!

The summer is finally over, and what a great experience it has been. I got a chance to explore the world of consulting, work with some very smart people and learn a fantastic amount of information within a very short period of time. Since the project was ending the same week as my internship was, the last two weeks were critical. This was when we made the final push for our client deliverables. The model that I initially developed was used extensively by the team to nail down the quantitative aspects of our recommendations. Also, the principal on my project thought that this model would be a great tool for the client as they went ahead with the implementation in the coming months. So I had to spend some time cleaning up the model, making last minute changes and including the relevant background information so that the model was easily usable by the client. It’s one thing when you develop a model for your analysis. It’s something completely different when you are developing a model that someone else will use – this was a key learning for me. Always develop the model as if someone else were going to use it. I also had to do my final presentation at the Chicago office last week. My manager was extremely understanding about the criticality of that, and gave me some time off so that I could work on my deck. The team pitched in to review my deck and gave some great feedback on how to make the presentation stronger.

I just want to finish with another observation from my experience. There is one key skill that I have noticed is common among the senior folks. With any problem, they have a laser-like focus on the fundamental question we are trying to answer, and are always asking “how does this piece of work answer that question?”. This enables them to break down even the most complex problems into simple relevant blocks. And this is a skill I definitely want to develop over the next few years.

Well, to summarize I had a fantastic summer experience. I couldn’t have asked for more. Now, three weeks of down time before the next year at school. Thanks for reading, and take care!

Final Post

This will be my final post on this blog, yes I could talk about the lessons I learned, about UBS, or more about Sales and Trading. But that really is boring stuff for me to talk about; after all in my view aside from learning about company specific things like culture, infrastructure and workflow, the life lessons really are the same across all internships. Hence I will attempt to explain the sharp drop in equity markets over the past 2 days instead. Hopefully you, the reader, finds that more interesting and applicable.

So the Fed came out on Tuesday and confirmed that they will be using principal payments from the mortagage backed securities they purchased during the crisis to reinvest in treasuries (recall basic bond math and all the articles in the financial press during fall of 2008 here). They further stated that the purpose of this is to keep their balance sheet at a constant size. In layman's terms this means the Fed will engage in a further, albeit much smaller, round of injecting cash into the financial system. This should be bullish for stocks right? Yes, it was on initial impressions, hence the short lived rally in equities post the immediate announcement. And then people started to realize the facts - the Fed is keeping its balance sheet constant, so going forward, aside from really small investments (around 150 billion), there will not be another stimulus or huge amounts of cash printed and pushed into the system. Furthermore, it was a policy announcement, not an operational one, i.e. no principal payments were reinvested.

The immediate result of this was the further tanking of the stock market and a sharp rally in the US dollar as the market came round.

Do note however, that the fact remains that the US economy is on tenterhooks, and the possibility of a double dip recession remains looming on the horizon. Implicit in the Fed's announcement and decision was the basis of a weak US economy, hence the need for a little nudge and reassurance. However the market plays out to this is anyone's guess, but unfortunately for the Fed, they remain cornered in a tight spot between a weakening economy and fiscal profligacy - not a good spot to be in.

Bottom of the 9th: Game Almost Over

(BBA, Washington Nationals Baseball Club)

Hey Everyone,

I am sad to say that this is my last post of the summer. I obviously do not want my internship to end, but I am also excited because that means I am headed back to Ann Arbor that much sooner.

I have learned so much this summer working for the Washington Nationals. I have made some great friends, with the other co-interns, full time employees, and most importantly with my supervisor. I have learned so much from Heather this summer. She truly is the most hardworking and driven individual I have ever met. She is non-stop working, and always giving it her all. I think the relationships I have made will be one of the best things I take away from my entire internship. I have learned something different everyday and from every person within my department, and within the organization.

I learned so much this summer, more than I ever expected. Of course I learned a lot about the Nationals and the Sports Industry. Most importantly, I learned that jobs are not Monday-Friday and 9-5. During my internship, I put in a lot of hours, and a lot of those hours were on weekends. It taught me a valuable lesson: that jobs are way different from school and do not follow a Monday-Friday (or Thursday) schedule, and that’s the real world.

One thing I really am taking away from this internship is the real-life, unique experience I was given. I was able to work with an organization during one of their most exciting times. This season, while I was here, the Nationals brought in a new Pitcher: Steven Strasburg. This was such an exciting time to be working for the Nationals, because everyone was so excited about Strasburg, and everyone was genuinely happy to be at work.

Throughout my internship, I think I have shown my boss my incredible work ethic. I think I have grown as a person during my internship. I came in about 9 weeks ago, scared, nervous, and anxious. Now, I am confident in myself and my work.

Overall, I have enjoyed my 9 weeks here with the Nationals. It has been a lot of work but also a lot of fun. I hope everyone enjoys their last few weeks of summer!

Almost done

I am at the final stretch now, with two weeks left to my final presentations. All interns in my VP’s team do a five-minute presentation demonstrating their summer project during a 2-hour meeting at the end of the internships. All the other interns are software developers. Since I am the first and only MBA intern this team has had, my presentation will be unique. The first thing I learned in a communication class I took at Berkeley Haas last year was “Know Thy Audience” (no that is not how the professor phrased it). I have to tailor my presentation for software engineers and tech gurus, which I hope will not be too hard since I was a software engineer not too long ago. The second presentation is the famous Amazon white paper – a six page executive summary of my research, findings, results etc. I will present this white paper to 6 to 10 people during a 45 minute meeting. As with everything else, everyone is incredibly helpful. I hope to have it reviewed by a couple of people over the next two weeks.

This project reinforced a few beliefs I already had and taught me many new things. First, I do love numbers. Time flew by when I was working in excel on projections and models. I love a data driven job where I am analyzing trends to make recommendations. Second, there is a lot of room for me to improve when analyzing data. One of the principles at Amazon is to dig deep. I learned early in my internship through feedback that I needed to do more of that -- get to the core of the data, figure out what the underlying assumptions are, figure out what the methodology for collecting the data is. I initially hesitated to follow up with people because I did not want to disturb them or take too much of their time, but I learned that it is okay and even encourage to ask many questions. The biggest take-away from the summer is that I should foster my curiosity and that applies to all aspects of my life.

My project strategy takes shape at Harley-Davidson

(The picture shows the oldest known Harley-Davidson motorcycle which can be viewed at the H-D museum in Milwaukee)

With 2 weeks to go, I am getting into fifth gear to shape my recommendations for my project on developing a long-term personalization strategy for Harley-Davidson. As I had indicated in an earlier post, this strategy is a holistic look at what the company can do over 3 horizons to personalize the entire customer experience. And believe me, the project is as interesting as it sounds!

The Leadership Development Program (LDP) has an annual conference where all the LDP interns, incumbents and alumni gather over sessions and dinner. This year we had a workshop on globalization and sustainability. We split up into groups and brainstormed over the two topics and then got back together to exchange our ideas. The sheer knowledge and creativity of the group impressed me a lot – I always find it amazing that companies do not use more of their brain power to generate innovative ideas everyday!

The workshop was followed by a panel discussion on our international efforts, which was again very candid and interesting. We ended the sessions with a town hall with our CEO, Keith Wandell, and COO, Matt Levatich on the topic of innovation. This was followed by a dinner where I got to meet with other LDP alumni and some of the most interesting people in the company.

Harley-Davidson has a plant in York, Pennsylvania, which is undergoing tremendous transformation right now. We visited the plant yesterday via Baltimore, MD. We hired 2 cabs from the Baltimore airport and drove down to the plant. The visit was extremely well-organized, and we had the opportunity to meet some very impressive people at the plant. The strength of Harley-Davidson is the passion of its employees for the product, and more so at the assembly plants. This was very evident when we heard the pride with which all employees spoke about their work. Being a consultant, I have worked with many companies over the last 8 years, and I cannot think of a single other company that even comes close with respect to both, customer and employee loyalty.

As you must have guessed by now, I have become a big fan of the company, and for a person who has never had anything to do with the manufacturing industry or motorcycles, that’s saying a lot! My final post will wrap up my time at Harley-Davidson, and also have incredible pictures of my trip to Sturgis. Till then, have fun riding!