This week in class, we looked at the two statements released by the Business Roundtable, one in 1997 and the other in 2019. We broke into our groups and discussed whether the revised version of the statement was an empty rhetoric or will it bring change. The main difference in the 2019 statement compared to 1997 was a specified revision to address the company’s stakeholders and how they will change from focusing on the bottom line when it comes to shareholders. This discussion was very interesting, and I enjoyed hearing my classmates’ opinions on the topic. Then we watched A Civil Action, a movie based on the real-life story of companies polluting the lake in Woburn, MA, and how the civil action lawsuit ensued. This movie was very insightful in how corporations act and their impact on others. I look forward to continuing to discuss this topic.

In my internship this week, my Boss and I met remotely, as he was in Germany participating in a conference for the UN. During our meeting, we went over the work I have been completing over the past few weeks and then discussed a new project. This new project focused on pollution rates from beaches in Southern California that volunteers cleaned up. This data was compiled in an unusable manner, and my boss asked me to reorganize the data to be easily computed into coding systems to compare values. I also went on a visit to Politecnico Milano University with a Ph.D. student at my company. She gave me a tour of the campus and talked to me about her research. It was very interesting to see the difference in universities compared to Lehigh. I continued my work by beginning to implement my cleaned-up data into coding servers to determine which layout would best organize and compare the data.

This week some of the group traveled to Venice for a quick day trip and then to Barcelona for the weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed walking through Venice and am glad to have checked it off my bucket list of places to visit. We walked through the entire city and stopped at many glass shops throughout, it was very cool to see all the different jewelry that had glass incorporated into it. Then another group of us traveled to Barcelona for the weekend, which was enjoyable although very quick. Barcelona is beautiful and very lively! We enjoyed the local foods (the tapas and paella were incredible) and took our time walking around the city and going out on a boat to enjoy the nice weather. Lili, Sachi, and I stayed in our first Hostel, but it was a success and we are excited to travel more over the next few weeks.