AstraZeneca
I had the privilege of spending three months with AstraZeneca in the Summer of 2014 as an IS Intern supporting the Sales Team. My project in particular dealt with the iPad applications that support internal sales meetings and conferences. Such applications help navigate conference attendees throughout conference venues by supplying unique, attendee-specific information, including but not limited to, agendas, venue maps, attendee directories, speaker directories, learning materials, and so forth.
My role was to look into the current meeting application and see if there were opportunities to increase efficiency by either remodeling the current application or by replacing it with a new one. This also included investigating the vendor marketplace for such a tool to see if the vendor could be replaced altogether.
Additionally, I had the opportunity alongside a few other IS Interns to go down to a conference in DC to see the applications used live at a conference which gave me the unique chance to identify unforeseen problems and potential requirements that would have otherwise been very difficult to uncover without this hands-on experience.
Outside of my project, I was able to partake in many networking opportunities. We were provided with lunch and learns where we were treated to lunch with various key leadership personnel from AZ, during which we had the chance to learn about their unique paths to their current position and also could gain insight into both key soft skills and key hard skills to develop in the current IT landscape. Beyond those provided to us, I was able to take advantage of a very well integrated Active Directory Server to initiate my own personal one-on-ones with additional leadership. I met with many key personnel and discussed a melange of different topics, such as the standard pharmaceutical pipeline, how to understand the financial statements of a pharmaceutical company, the importance of the consulting profession, and many more.
My main takeaways from this internship was the poise and confidence needed to succeed in a corporate environment. I love to learn and my affinity for learning can bring me success in any arrangement but to navigate the corporate world, you must be willing to not only learn pedantically from a book, but you must also learn the soft skills required to maneuver an organizational culture filled with unique cultural backgrounds, technical expertise, and differing opinions. It is important to be very patient and take the time to understand how to tailor your message to your audience. It is important to communicate clearly and honestly to avoid the sort of misunderstandings that lag key deliverables from being achieved. It is important to manage one’s time well, as there are no syllabi to govern your every move; you must be able to estimate your own deadlines with some of the unstructured work that comes in such an environment. I truly valued this experience and learned a lot during my time with AstraZeneca.
My fellow interns and I got a chance to explore the R&D lab at MedImmune in Gaithersburg, MD. This was a great opportunity to better visualize the trajectory of a pharmaceutical from thought to creation.
Near the end of the internship, a few of us got to go down a conference in DC where they set up a karaoke booth for a chance for attendees to have some fun alongside a glut of educational workshops.