Student Spotlight: Bethany Rolan

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BHP senior Bethany Rolan was originally intimidated by the size of UT and envisioned herself at  small liberal arts college in the northeast. Her mother insisted that she apply to one Texas school, so she applied to UT Austin. She didn’t know much about BHP at the time. She had only heard about it through her college counselor. After being accepted into the program, she attended Discover BHP in the Spring of her senior year.  Bethany remembers it as an incredible experience, and appreciated that the professors really knew their students. The program was what led her to choose UT and BHP.

As an entering freshman, she aspired to be an event planner specializing in corporate events and high-end weddings. This led her to join the student organization Campus Events and Entertainment. She served on the Texas Traditions Committee planning such campus events as Texas Revue, the largest campus talent show, and 40 Acres Fest, the largest campus outdoor festival.

Bethany was honored to be accepted into Orange Jackets, the oldest women’s service organization on campus, her sophomore year. This year, she is serving as the president of the organization. She says that “it has been the biggest opportunity for development she has ever experienced” and says that trying to lead a group of driven, empowered women leaders has helped her to learn about herself, her competencies, and her leadership style. Bethany is also involved in the Best Buddies program, where she works with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and she is a member of the Honors Business Association.

Bethany added a supply chain major her sophomore year and landed an internship with Fiat Chrysler in the area of Purchasing . She enjoyed the role, but found her career interests shifting again as she learned from her peers about the dynamic opportunities to engage new audiences, travel across the world, and work on unique projects as a management consultant. She recruited for a management consulting position her Junior year and was grateful to have the opportunity to intern with McKinsey. Bethany will return to the firm as a full-time employee after graduation.  She plans to join the women’s network at her new firm and is excited to work for a company that will let her work on projects that empower women.

In the future, she would like to consult in education and lead empathy and language campaigns for young students, teaching inclusivity. “How we are taught to talk people and how we hear people talk about others is very important,” she says. 

Having a strong support system of students who are all driven, yet passionate about diverse interests, has made a significant impact on Bethany’s BHP experience. “People are the whole point,” she says, explaining that engaging with others deeply and developing strong relationships have been the most rewarding part of college. “BHP and Orange Jackets have changed me as a person and are what I will remember most about college. Every project, initiative, and event I have helped complete on campus has been enabled by incredible people.” She wholeheartedly believes that informal mentoring from older students was instrumental in her gaining an understanding of the unique career paths she could take, which is why she is always happy to go to lunch or grab coffee with underclassmen!

Summer Internship | Student Spotlight: Allison Kubis

Allison Kubis Exxon

Company: PricewaterhouseCoopers
Position: Advisory Intern, Management Consulting in the Technology, Information, Communication, and Entertainment Vertical and Finance Horizontal.

What did you expect to gain from your internship this past summer?

I hoped to gain some insight into the consulting world. How it is working for a client, the typical work/life balance, etc. I previously had an internship with a company in industry, so I wanted to see the similarities and differences to learn what I liked and disliked before interviewing for full-time positions.

Did the internship meet or supersede your expectations? How?

The internship totally exceeded my expectations. I was able to work not only on client work but also some internal initiatives. The client work was interesting and I really enjoyed being able to help PwC improve and gain more revenue.  On top of that, I met a lot of wonderful people, both interns and full-time employees on my team. Also, my career coach was great and even gave me the opportunity to sit on his project for a couple of days so I could see what other projects were like.

Tell me about an interesting encounter you had during your internship.

One of the most interesting days I had was actually the first one of my project. I sat in on an “Account Planning Workshop,” where managers, directors, and partners of the firm met to discuss a potential client. It was awesome getting to meet so many of the people who are the upper management of that area in PwC. I also liked seeing the detail that the firm goes into when pursuing a client, its people, and its problems.

What did you learn about yourself that you did not know before?

I learned that I am a quick learner and able to work without many details. I also learned that I need to focus on my reader when creating a document and organize it so that it’s easy for them to consume. I also learned where my mental capacity is.

Consulting is known for long hours, and I learned the point at which my brain stops working and I need a break, whether it’s eating, working out, or driving home.

What did you contribute to the company?2015-07-20 10.12.10

I contributed by working on a few things for my client, but I also worked for PwC internally. I did research and created slides for a partner as he was preparing to pitch some work to a potential client. On top of that, I also worked on some competitor and sector research for an event that PwC was interested in getting more involved in.

What advice do you have for other students who are recruiting for internships?

After this summer, I would definitely recommend that students try different areas with each of their internships. I know it can be easy to accept a return offer or stick with what you know, but you learn so much more when you try new things. I’m glad I went in the opposite direction for my second internship because I learned a lot about what I want out of my full-time job, so I know what companies to target.

Summer Internship | Student Spotlight: Benedikt Kroll

BenedicktCompany: Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Position: Sales & Trading Rotational Intern

What did you expect to gain from your internship with Goldman Sachs?

I expected to gain a better understanding of international markets, a broader exposure to global capital movements and a more quantitative approach to forming and expressing trade ideas.

Did the internship meet or supersede your expectations? How?

My three rotations were spent on macro-oriented desks in currencies, rates, and equities. I had exposure to the biggest financial macro markets via instruments ranging from simple linear spot to rate curves and vol surfaces. The culture at Goldman encourages collaboration above most competitors, which  made finding ideas and learning a very easy and natural process.

Tell me about an interesting encounter you had during your internship.

I met a lot of amazing, often very young people in senior roles at Goldman. The best isolated encounters I had were with senior people, because they cared more for who you are as a person than your straight ability. In one particular encounter I talked for around an hour with one of the partners about my childhood, upbringing, and extracurricular interests without ever touching on financial/work related topics. For me that was particularly memorable because it showed that Goldman cared not only for my technical and commercial development but was concerned with my development as a person and independent thinker as well.

What did you learn about yourself that you did not know before?

I learned a good deal about what I value in my work and employer from both a professional as well as a personal perspective.

I learned the importance of quickly arriving at a good estimate of the best course of action as well as how to approximate the best balance between sticking with it and re-evaluating as you get new information.

What did you contribute to the company?

Most of what you contribute as an S&T intern is bringing a different perspective to known problems/inefficiencies. Much of your internship is spent being mentored. Trading in particular is and for the foreseeable future will remain, an apprenticeship business. That being said I contributed on a few projects relating to problems ranging from more technical goal oriented projects to simple daily recaps and resultant trade ideas/daily positioning game plans.

What advice do you have for other students who are recruiting for internships?

If you’re thinking about what role you might fit in, I think the biggest questions you should ask are

1) what time frame you like your problems to be – do you want to spend minutes, days, weeks, years on projects. What’s your attention span?

2) how much risk you’re willing to take with your life. Are you ok with being in a role where there’s no structure to your advancement or do you need it laid out for you. Can you take being fired?

3) what you value in your life and how you want to spend your time thinking about the world. Do you want to think about people, organizations or economies? Do you like the role that your job plays in helping society move forward?

If your work is going to play a big role in how you spend your time and live your life – in finance the hours alone oftentimes force this – your job should reflect who you are.

Summer Internship | Student Spotlight: Julie Yoon

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Company: ExxonMobil
Position: Upstream Controller’s Project Development Intern

What did you expect to gain from your internship?

During the course of the internship, I expected to have the opportunity to meet and network with a lot of great people and learn more about the company and the numerous sectors it is composed of. I also wanted to be challenged and to be able to learn something new on the job every day.

Did the internship meet or supersede your expectations? How?

The internship definitely met and superseded my expectations. The project that I worked on this summer gave me the chance to reach out to many diverse people within the company and challenged me in ways that I have not been challenged before within a classroom setting. The aspect that really exceeded my expectations was the company culture. Being treated as a full-time employee and working on a project to solve a problem that the company was currently facing, helped me become fully immersed in the collaborative, fun learning culture of the company.

Tell me about an interesting encounter you had during your internship.

During the internship, one of the best encounters I experienced was during the intern events. This is the first summer that ExxonMobil had a program that allowed interns across all sectors of the company to interact, network, and participate in intern events together. This gave me the chance to meet both undergraduate and master students outside of the business realm and allowed me to network with people who work in the field or in technical and engineering focused roles. It definitely helped me understand the large scope of the company and meet a lot of great students.

It is the people that truly make ExxonMobil a great place to work, and I cannot emphasize enough that the people I met were so diverse, knowledgeable, and caring during the entire course of my summer internship.

 

What did you learn about yourself that you did not know before?11720023_10207229446875615_806798095_n

One thing I learned about myself this summer was that I really enjoy solving large scope, abstract problems. I have always geared toward problems that are very defined and easy to understand; however, for my internship project, the problem I faced was very abstract and not neatly defined. I found the process of de-tangling the problem very interesting and met a lot of incredibly smart people along the way.

What did you contribute to the company?

I updated and improved the project management database that the regional and senior project controllers used within Development. By interviewing the people that maintain and use the database, I was able to increase the effectiveness and value of the process. This provided a better tool to analyze and understand the various projects that Development works on.

What advice do you have for other students who are recruiting for internships?

This internship definitely was an incredible experience. Even though it was a summer internship, there was not a moment when I felt that I was not one of the valued employees of the company. It gave me the chance to really see what type of work and daily routine a full-time hire would experience.

Students Take Fourth Place in a Non-Profit Case Consulting Competition

BHP students Robert Ma, Thomas Pigeon, Jane Tedjajuwana and Shannon Wey took fourth place at the McDonough-Hilltop Business Strategy Challenge at Georgetown University in Washington, DC this month. Twenty teams competed, 11 from the U.S. and nine international, in this unique non-profit case consulting competition. This year’s case centered on expanding job opportunities available to members of the National Institute for the Blind (NIB).

MCC

From left: Jane Tedjajuwana, Robert Ma, Thomas Pigeon, Shannon Wey

“The main goal of NIB is to help the blind become independent personally and financially. Our job in the case competition was to find ways for the NIB to open up job opportunities not only within the federal government, but in the private sector and in the service industries,” said Shannon Wey.

The team presented a three-pronged solution which involved starting an internship program allowing blind people to get a foot in the door with employers, building a stronger network of partner companies across the nation, and implementing a talent showcase open to companies to show what blind people are capable of with current assisted technologies.

The unique emphasis on non-profit organizations altered the way the students view not-for-profit work, “We realized all the different obstacles that are placed in front of a non-profit, be it people’s biases against the people the organization is trying to serve, to limited opportunities, to financial restrictions,” said Thomas Pigeon. “It gives you a greater appreciation for how they maximize every dollar they are given.”

“Non-profit put such a huge twist on it. I’ve done six or seven case competitions and this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most because the nature of the case made if feel more fulfilling because I felt like I was contributing to a greater cause,” said Robert Ma. The students were also able to dedicate more of their efforts in areas, which may not receive as much attention in typical business case competitions. “Because it’s a nonprofit we didn’t just focus in on revenue,” said Jane Tedjajuwana. “We didn’t look at the financial projection at all in the first round because they just wanted to hear our ideas and gage how realistic it was because ideally they wanted to be able to implement the solution.”

The team also enjoyed meeting other competitors from outside of the U.S. and hearing their global perspective on the case. “It provided a really unique experience for all of us. We appreciated how international it was. We met people from Hong Kong, Australia, Germany and Singapore,” said Robert Ma.

After taking a closer look at non-profit organizations, all of the team members said they would now definitely consider working with non-profits after college.

The trip was not all work. The group managed to find time to visit the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and made sure to make a pit stop at Georgetown Cupcake.