Cultural Immersion: I began our last full week in in Rome exploring the Colosseum, the Forum, the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. That was the most walking I’ve ever done, but the sights made it worth it. Rome is such a beautiful city, rich with Italian culture and history. I’ve had the best food yet in Rome, especially carbonara – famous to the city!  Some of my favorite places to eat in Milan are Roman pasta restaurants like one I went to on the Navigli for lunch this past week. I really am going to miss this time I’ve spent in Italy and am glad I get to spend our last few days here in Tuscany and Florence with all of my classmates.

 

Class on CSR: This week we viewed the film Erin Brockovoch, which followed the life of a single mother of three looking for a job when her stubbornness earned her a position in a law firm filing. Her inquisitive and persistent mindset pushed her to look into a particular file that led to a major multi-million dollar lawsuit against a utility company for contaminating the drinking water of local residents for years. These residents were subject to many varying life threatening illnesses. Viewing this film encompassed our discussions these past six weeks on the responsibility that corporations need to take to protect its stakeholders. Ultimately the utility company in the film failed its community and paid for the consequences. CSR leads to long-term profitability that all companies should recognize and fully have implemented to combat these types of issues

 

Internship: I continued contacting potential European angel investors this week in my internship, while tracking the response rates in an excel file. I coded different cells to understand how many investors I contacted actually connected and responses to me . I then also was able to code the data to see the response rates by country. It is interesting to see how these rates differ and also develop some excel skills I hadn’t known before. I also continued the research on vending solutions for a retail company organizing all their data in a presentation to be shown to a corporate partner. I have really enjoyed seeing all of the innovate startups in Italy and around the world, while meeting some really amazing people!