When I received an internship offer from Strategex in January of 2020 I was excited for my final internship to be close to home (in Chicago, Illinois). My previous internships had taken me afar to places such as London, Los Angeles, Salzburg, and Prague. So, being close to home would be a nice change of pace. Little did I know that the internship would be not only occurring close to home but within my home.

Despite being in the middle of a historic pandemic, I was able to complete a full internship with Strategex from my Chicagoland home. Maybe it was because I was remote, maybe it was because of the stellar team at this management consultancy, but I have never been so energized, engaged, and efficient!

From late May to early August, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with Strategex. Throughout my eight weeks with the management consultancy, I was tasked with a variety of assignments. Some of these assignments included strategic planning assistance, video editing, google analytics reporting, quartile and quad analysis, and template creation. These tasks aided me in developing new skills, improving my critical thinking, and gaining valuable real-life experience. My day-to-day responsibilities were far from the only value I took away from my Strategex experience. The company’s employees and culture showed me how productive, driven professionals should work and behave. Their dedication to the company’s 25 guiding fundamentals gave me an example to follow which I strived to emulate during my eight weeks with the company. I'd be remiss not to give my manager, Maggie a shout out here. She was an inspiration -- so strategic, insightful, and fun. I hope to have a manager like her again, or maybe one day I'll be a manager like her.

My single favorite experience during my time with Strategex was the strategic planning session I attended with Joe Hahn. Over the course of two days, I was responsible for recording every bit of information exchanged between the client and Joe. I took my notes home and built a strategic plan from scratch which I then delivered to the client after the weekend. The experience was not only enjoyable and novel, it was incredibly valuable to observe high-level thinkers and problem solvers use 80/20 principles to guide their decisions. After the two-day session, I found myself thinking about problems in my daily life critically and applying the same principles to those thoughts and problems.

This summer did not play out as I expected it to in January, but somehow Strategex was able to adapt to the circumstances to provide an incredibly valuable internship for me. I will start my senior year at Elon University meaning there will be no more internships next summer; I will be an adult in the workplace. At the beginning of these eight weeks, this thought filled me with dread but after this valuable experience, I feel much less uncertain about the future.

Thank you Strategex for an incredible summer. I came for an internship, I left with the sharpened ability to problem-solve, think critically, and lead.