International Food Policy Research Institute
This past summer I completed a 12-week internship with International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), a non-profit organization.They provide research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development. For the internships entirety, I worked in the office located in Washington DC, which is the company’s worldwide headquarters.
During my internship, I got to see how the IT infrastructure at a major organization is laid out. While there I worked for the Content and Knowledge Management Team which as you can tell was tasked with uploading and managing content as well as assisting researches with knowledge and information they needed. With this being said, I got to interact and collaborate with all types of IT professionals who possess many skill-sets. One particular project that I worked on involved creating a java script that would provide researches and users citations for the different projects as well as export the citation into a third party bibliography generation application. Overall, I gained many technical skills, but more importantly with this being my first experience at a professional organization. I was able to learn a great deal about the workplace culture and environment.