International Trade Associate
From January 2023 to August 2023, I interned as an International Trade Associate at the U.S. Commercial Service Philadelphia Office. The Philadelphia office’s location is on 1617 JFK Blvd., Suite 1580, Philadelphia, PA 19103. The U.S. Commercial Service (CS), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, offers companies a full range of expertise in international trade. As a part of the U.S. federal government’s services, the Philadelphia office serves Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware counties. In addition to the local office in Philadelphia with 4 International Trade Specialists, the U.S. C.S. network includes offices in every state, and in over 80 countries. Companies can find assistance locally in more than 100 U.S. Commercial Service offices nationwide and in more than 80 international offices. On a daily basis, USCS Trade Specialists work with exporters to optimize their export operations. Their assistance includes international trade topics such as, but are not limited to: Website Globalization, International Marketing, International Shipping, Market Research, and International Financial Strategies.
For my role, I contacted and informed companies within the counties of eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware about opportunities to export products and services to international markets; maintained an up-to-date database of companies and services performed under US Commercial Service through Salesforce and SharePoint; and researched and created graphical representations based on economic data and market trends from internal and external databases on Excel and PowerPoint to support the office’s client activities.
Some projects that I worked on was the Automated Commercial Environment Seminar, where I helped companies sign up for the seminar, made sure that all companies that were in attendance were given their certificates for export compliance and helped in general to ensure that the event was running smoothly; Salesforce database updates, where I made sure that the U.S. Commercial Service’s database was up-to-date with the companies and services that were performed under the program; and trade leads for multiple companies where I would perform market research on Thomas net and other services to match up specific U.S. export product, such as refrigerants, for importers in other countries.
During my time in my internship, I learned the importance of maintaining constant and meaningful communication with clients like in my Business Communications course, ways to maximize and efficiently maintain databases in Salesforce as was learned in my Digital Systems course, and ways to create productive and effective market research for clients as was learned in my Introduction to Econometric course.
All of the skills and knowledge that I learned at my time at the U.S. Commercial Service can be used for further career opportunities and for my time here at Temple University.