Name: Lisa Adanye
Class Year: 2023
Major: Mathematics
Hometown: Kumasi, Ghana
Internship Organization: Russell Reynolds Associate
Job Title: Summer Research Analyst
Location: Atlanta, GA
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
This summer, I relocated to Atlanta to work for a private executive search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates (RRA). I had no idea that such a firm provided such niche services prior to my internship. At the firm, we help recruit, assess, and coach C-Suite executives of firms using insights, research, and complicated tools and websites to verify and make the right decisions for these important talents of firms. In the firm, we have consultants, project coordinators, and researchers. We also have the coaching team responsible for executive evaluation, assessment, and advisory, then we have the Center of Exellence (CoE), new hires who are fresh graduates. In my position as a research intern, I got to work with twenty-nine other interns in different offices around the U.S; all of us have varied backgrounds with only two people having the same major. I have two projects, first finding a mock CEO for Twitter given the possibility of it being acquired, then doing a total search on everything related to the financial services branch of RRA. Apart from these two intern projects, I also had the opportunity to work on five other projects helping consultants and researchers with their projects.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I chanced upon this internship from a cluster of opportunities Lizbeth from Jopwell sent me, I was interested in the job description which promised that during the internship, I will be able to leverage my qualitative and quantitative skills, build a network with great and talented people, and most importantly for me, work in fields ranging from healthcare, social impact, to finance and technology. Getting to the last week of my internship, I realize the internship has exceeded my expectations.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
A favorite thing so far about my internship is the amazing people I have had the opportunity to meet. From my roommates to my supervisors, coworkers, and other interns, they are willing to share their experiences, and resources, and willing to help me win — I know it won’t end when my internship ends. Another favorite thing of mine is the lunches. We have weeks where we go for lunch every day and learn about the experiences of others, then we go for happy hours to celebrate team birthdays, weddings, etc. We have community dinners every month at amazing places, and I got to travel to Dallas for training during my second week, where I met all the other interns, we went to a baseball game after our training, worked on a project together, and pitched it. In our last week, we will get to go to Dallas again, stay at an amazing hotel, and pitch our last project for the summer. Overall, this has been an amazing experience.
Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?
In this internship, I learned how to use SharePoint, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Zoom, Slack, Beacon, CapIQ, Pitchbook, ZoomInfo, etc to get information, organize data, present, network, and pitch information. The valuable skills of data collection, validation, organization, and presentation are skills I will be using in my future work. Being able to communicate my ideas to my team, my challenges to my coworkers, and my progress to my managers is also a skill that would help me in so many ways going forward. Another thing I learned that I value is the value of time, deadlines, work well done, money, and being responsible.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.
Mathematics
