Accounting, auditing, assessing — three Questrom School of Business students got a taste of the real world at their summer internships.
Marina Barros, a senior in Questrom with a concentration in finance and information systems, interned at the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, Boston Seaport office. She focused on digital auditing.
“I was reviewing the documentation behind IT function,” Barros said, “making sure that your password is eight figures long … making sure that’s in place and going back to the system and checking it.”
Barros first interned for PricewaterhouseCoopers the summer before her junior year and was given a return offer for this past summer. Her favorite part of the internship was meeting other interns and working with professionals.
“Even though I’m still an undergrad in college, it’s really awesome to have that experience and learn from that,” Barros said, “but also asking them personal questions like ‘how did they like their career’ and ‘how did they get to where they are.’”
The most challenging part for Barros was adjusting to the corporate lifestyle.
“It’s just hard, it’s not something I’m used to,” Barros said. “Even being remote in my own room, it was hard to not get distracted and just do other things.”
Unlike Barros, Vanessa Torres, a senior in Questrom with concentrations in information systems and marketing, said she liked the idea of working nine to five every day, 40 hours a week.
“My favorite part was honestly just getting to see a glimpse of what my life would look like after college,” Torres said.
Torres worked at Ernst & Young Global Limited over the summer as a technology risk consulting intern.
“I worked 40 hours a week, 9 to 5,” Torres said. “I was going into the office almost every day because they have a flexible work balance where you can work virtually some days and you can go into the office some days, which I really liked.”
Her job was to be in charge of auditing app controls and helping the company’s clients work through their business processes. She said it was not the “average grab coffee internship.”
“I actually got to work directly with clients,” Torres said. “I was in client meetings, I was talking to clients, I was doing the similar job functions as a full-time staff would do at the company.”
Torres said she ended up receiving a full-time offer from EY after graduation and she plans to apply to other offices and travel around the world.
“I want to start out with EY,” Torres said. “It’s a really good stepping platform for me to build those connections with people and to establish myself.”
As for Breann Pearson, a senior in Questrom with a concentration in information systems and law, it was Questrom’s team-building skills that helped her at the non-profit organization called Chica Project, located in the Greater Boston area.
“You work in a team and so teamwork is something that’s very important in a workplace, especially in the workplace that I was at,” Pearson said.
Pearson said the mission of the Chica Project organization was to “close the opportunity gap” for women of color and young women of color by equipping them with necessary skills and confidence to succeed in today’s society.
Pearson worked on the development team, and she said her main task was to do assessment of grants.
“At Chica Project, a lot of the workers, the interns, the full-time staff, the fellows, a lot of us are women of color,” Pearson said. “It was great to work in an environment with people who look like me and have similar experiences to me.”
Pearson said the experience was “eye-opening” because she realized there were options for her besides working for traditional companies.
“There are a lot of things for people who go to Questrom … to do besides to go into your standard for profit companies and working in finance or working in accounting,” Pearson said. “It’s always important to realize that there are different options out there for you.”
