Author Archives: Donica Williams

Company: J.P. Morgan
Position: Corporate Finance Advisory Intern

Throughout the summer, the deeper into finance I got, the more I found myself visiting parks and museums in my free time. While New York City is the financial capital of the world, it simultaneously provides the perfect mental escape. I could spend hours at the MoMA or the Cooper Hewitt and expand my interests in fashion, art, and photography. I never realized how closely I held on to my liberal arts education, and I plan to do so regardless of my career moving forward.

Company: Texas Office of the Attorney General
Position: Human Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime (HTTOC) Section

Why did you decide to work at the Attorney General’s office?

By the fall of my junior year, I had decided that I was going to attend law school after graduation, with the intent of becoming a prosecutor. Since high school, I’ve been passionate about ending human trafficking, and in college, I’ve held leadership roles and participated in community organizations to this end. All that to say that I was looking for an internship at a government agency that was willing to take on an undergraduate student who was interested in practicing criminal law. If that internship was related to human trafficking, even better!

Ultimately, my decision to accept the OAG’s offer was a result of its specificity and its Austin location. At the OAG, I would be working within the Human Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime Section, an area that was directly related to my passion; at the district attorney’s office, I would be placed in a particular section and then rotated through several other areas throughout the summer. At the end of the day, I believe that God led me to the place that he wanted me this summer, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome!

Was there any one experience that stood out to you?

During the last week of my internship, one of the Assistant Attorney Generals in my section assisted in the prosecution of the first sex trafficking case in Corpus Christi. During the week-long trial, she was responsible for jury selection, the direct examination of the victim, the cross examination of the defendant, and the prosecution’s closing argument among a multitude of other tasks. Because I hope to become a sex crimes prosecutor after earning a law degree, observing an attorney that I admire and respect in the courtroom was an inspiring experience that I will never forget. My favorite part of the trial was the morning of voir dire (jury selection) – the process is a lot more exciting when you’re not the one being called for jury duty! On the last day of my internship, the jury convicted the defendant of Continuous Trafficking of Persons and sentenced him to 40 years in prison; this conviction was a tangible manifestation of the often-thankless time and effort that the attorneys expend to seek justice and was an encouraging way to end my time at the OAG.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to work in a similar industry?

Apply for positions that interest you even if you might not meet the qualifications for them. I applied to several internships that preferred graduate or law students, but I was interested in the agencies and felt that I met enough of the technical qualifications to apply. At a minimum, you put yourself on an agency’s radar screen for future opportunities, and you gain experience in interviewing. In the best case scenario, someone reading your application may decide to take a chance on you, and you could end up in an office working for people who have the career you aspire to. It happened to me!

Did the internship meet or supersede your expectations? How?

This internship definitely superseded my expectations, and I credit a large part of that to the attorneys that I was privileged to work for. As an undergraduate, I expected there to be a lot of tasks that I wasn’t qualified to complete, but my supervisors always found something meaningful for me to do and made me feel as though my work was valued. As the summer progressed, they trusted me with more responsibility, and as a result, I worked on tasks that I wouldn’t have expected to be trusted to perform until I entered law school.

I also didn’t expect to experience as much as I did during my time at the office. During my first week, one of the attorneys told me that she wanted me to have a weekly out-of-office learning experience. Because she was invested in my personal development as well as in the work that I could perform for her, I was able to hear oral arguments at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, attend a pre-trial hearing for a murder case, watch a Congressional hearing, observe parts of an aggravated burglary trial, and my boss’s entire sex trafficking trial. Having an internship where your supervisors care about your personal development beyond the value that you bring to the office can make or break an experience. This internship did more than simply supersede my expectations – it confirmed my dream of attending law school to seek justice in cases like these.

Company: St. Cloud Capital
Position: Analyst Intern

What were your overall responsibilities in your internship?

As St. Cloud was (and currently is) deploying capital from its third fund, I was primarily tasked with researching potential investments in the pipeline to help with the deal screening process.  That meant starting off with initial research on pitch decks and pro forma financials we received from management teams to decide which of those deals matched up with St. Cloud’s investment strategy.  I then did much more in-depth research on the few deals we signed up with letters of intent (LOIs) – building out cases and stress-testing the sensitivity of our debt to important assumptions like customer churn, mapping out competitors, and looking at precedent transactions to try to determine how we should price our warrants.  Since I was the only intern in the office, I also did all sorts of odd jobs to help out the partners and free up their time to go out and source more deals.

What is unique about the company and culture of St. Cloud Capital?

St. Cloud was, in my opinion, the perfect company environment.  The team was made up of people from a variety of different prestigious backgrounds – investment banking, distressed credit and special situations, fundamental equity, etc.  They were also all friendly and had an open-door policy, and would take time during the day to answer whatever questions I had.  Some of my questions pertained to the projects I was working on, but there were plenty of times where the professionals there were more than happy to give me their high-level thoughts on the markets, discuss stock picks, and help me out with recruiting advice.

What is your biggest takeaway from this internship?

Getting to tap into the experience of people who’ve been investing in public and private markets for many years was the best part of my time at St. Cloud.  Excel-monkey stuff is important, but it’s also fairly easily self-taught and/or drilled into you when you start working. The important stuff is the perspective you get from working with people who know how to look at deals, from sitting in on meetings with management teams and learning what questions to ask, and from learning the “why” behind what you’re working on and how it supports the investment process.

Did the internship meet or supersede your expectations? How?

St. Cloud invests in lower middle market companies (annual revenue generally between $10 million and $150 million) across all sectors, typically with a combination of debt and equity.  The breadth of this generalist strategy allowed me to pivot across multiple industries every few days and learn about business models I never knew existed.  It also gave me insights on how to assess a wide variety of transaction structures.  I was included on all of the management meetings and diligence calls for deals I worked on, and even got to meet with teams on site.  The whole experience was highly collaborative, and I always had interesting work to do.   I couldn’t have asked for a better summer internship.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to work in a similar industry?

You should always understand why you’re working on something and how it relates to the big picture.  You should choose a firm where the learning curve is steep, where the people who work above you care about your development, and where you enjoy talking to the people you work with about things other than work.  And you should always ask questions.