Topics of Interest: Marketing, Finance, Internship, Healthcare
Sruthi Rayaprolu is a first-year student at the University of Texas at Austin in the Canfield Business Honors Program. Her intent is to declare finance as a second major and she’s excited to go down the investment banking route when she recruits in her later college years. When she’s not crushing it as a Canfield BHPeer, Rayaprolu is the customer relations manager at a company called KIIO. Keep reading to learn more about her title and how she balances her internship with her classwork!
What is KIIO?
KIIO is a health care company that takes health care plans from other companies and matches them with employers, so that employers can have lower costs. We match executives from various companies to different plans that will give their employees benefits, and my job is to connect them together by communicating with these high-level executives.
What is your internship like?
I’ve been working for one of my mentors to develop videos for her, and she works at KIIO so she was able to offer me a position as their customer relations manager. I develop email campaigns and other marketing collateral for KIIO to better develop targets towards high level employees.
How did you form a relationship with your mentor?
I worked with Asana on a different company called Skin IQ my sophomore year of high school, which was a startup she was trying to develop. Through that, she was able to mentor me as a high schooler who had an interest in business. She was able to help me understand a little bit more about startups and networking in general.
What do you do on a daily basis?
On a day-to-day basis, I’m working on email campaigns. We use a platform called HubSpot, and I look at the analytics of how many people a specific email has reached via opens, clicks, all those kinds of rates. I then put the data together in some sort of file to present to my boss, and she takes a quick look at it to make sure the numbers are running well – and normally they are. I do this to make sure the emails are doing well and actually being read by other people.
What is an email campaign?
An email campaign is a series of emails that has a certain objective for a target audience. For example, we had a healthcare sequence, so we talked about opioid use and how that affects teenagers and adults. We had two emails that went out about a week apart which talked about the different uses and how it can be better through the healthcare system.
What is the culture of your company like?
The culture is very supportive; coming in as a high schooler or a student going into college, I did not have much experience in marketing or business in general. They take a lot of time to mentor you. Even my boss has been mentored by her subordinates just on how to use HubSpot (the platform that we use for email campaigns). I think the culture in general is super supportive because you can ask for help from anyone, no matter if they’re your boss or if they’re someone who works for you. I really like that it’s okay to be upfront about what you don’t know.
What experience have you gained from your internship at KIIO?
I’ve gained a lot of problem solving skills and general knowledge about how companies run, because this is my first internship at an established company rather than a startup. It’s been really interesting for me to see how running different teams work within the company, and learning the ways they all communicate with each other.
What has been your favorite part about working at KIIO?
My favorite part has been how flexible it is because coming in as a college student, I have so much work on my hands already. My team is very patient with my hours and my schedule. They structured it by giving me a bunch of work and assignments to do which I can spread out throughout the week and do whenever I’m most comfortable or have time.
How do you feel like this role has prepared you for what you want to do in the future?
My life goal is to start my own company somewhere along the lines of beauty, skincare, and clothing. To be able to develop a repertoire in finance and then go into entrepreneurship is my end goal.
I think the connections I’ve made so far within this role have been helpful in terms of who I can reach out to for new connections in the future. I don’t want to stay within marketing, I want to go into finance eventually, but that’s how networks work – I can ask the people I already know to point me in a new direction, which is super valuable.
How do you feel like being a student in Canfield BHP has helped you at your internship?
The reason this program is so great is because, again, it’s a place you can grow connections through. I’ll always mention to people about how I could probably help them get an internship at KIIO just through connecting with my boss, and she’s said she’s very open to hiring new CBHP students as well. So CBHP has given me the opportunity to combine my network with the people at KIIO to all the new people I’ve met in college.
What advice would you give to your CBHPeers who might want to pursue the avenues you’re interested in?
I’d say be bold and make the first step. A lot of people are willing to help mentor new people who are interested in business – they have the time and capacity, so if you just reach out and ask for a coffee chat or an interview that potentially land you an internship or a job further down the line which is really exciting.
Anything else you want to share?
I think you can always explore different areas in business. That’s something that I’ve learned: just because it’s not according to your initial career interests, you can still explore other options. I feel like I’ve genuinely enjoyed marketing as something that I want to take up as either a side hobby or possible third major. So even if something isn’t according to your initial interest, just explore it. Try it out. That’s what I’m doing, I just want to live my life the best I can.