This week at my internship was very similar to last week in terms of tasks. I have continued working on deep diving the start up companies for LTR vending machines. I finished this task by Friday and completed the entire two-pager presentations for each of the 19 companies I had to research further. Because my boss had to attend meetings in Venice this week from Wednesday until Friday, I only was in person at work on Tuesday, every other day I had remote work. On Tuesday, there happened to be a lot of people come to the office, and because there are only six desks, Caroline and I had to relocate to another part of the building. It ended up working out great because we got to sit at a table right in front of the air conditioning, which was very nice since it was over 90 degrees that day.

 

My week started off great because I spent the weekend from June 23^rd until June 25^th in Monopoli, Puglia with Emily, Tiffany, Ava, and Bella. We had a very relaxing beach day on Saturday and we spent the day on Sunday exploring the city which is breathtakingly beautiful. On Monday, I tried playing basketball with some of the others outside. It was very hot and I am not very good at basketball, so I felt bad for who was on my team. But it was a lot of fun and a great workout, especially considering it was over 90 degrees when we were playing with the sun beating down. Wednesday and Thursday were very chill days after work as I mostly just read my book, went to the gym, and caught up on work.

 

While we did not have class this week on Monday and Wednesday, Arianna and I ended up watching the Erin Brokovich movie together on Monday in Aparto. It was a really interesting movie and I was not expecting to be as intrigued with it as I was. I think that Julia Roberts played Erin Brokovich’s character very well: she was able to pull off the personality of a determined women, but who comes off very off-putting and wild to others, particularly at her workplace. On Tuesday, as credit for our internship class, we had the networking event from 7-9pm. I was happy that my boss ended up coming, and he stayed for a lot longer than I was expecting he was going to be able to which was great. I had great conversations with Raquel, who is a law consultant, as well as with Alessia, who works for IES. Finally, on Thursday in our internship course we all presented our final presentation. Mine was with Bryan, Lili, Le, and Bella and we discussed the pros and cons of Italian sustainability.

 

Internship: This week I got a new task that I will do until the end of my internship. Fin+Tech has a new client call Lagardere Travel Retail which is a massive international vending machine company. They are looking for start-ups to help scale their business and implement new and innovative technology. My colleagues did the scouting for the company and my job is to deep dive further the 19 companies that they are interested in. I am responsible for preparing presentations for each of these start ups on information such as product/service description, features, value added, funding, costs, revenues, scoping match, status, current patents, etc.. The way I find this information is through the company website, crunchbase, LinkedIn, and google.

 

Class: In class this week we discussed a lot about corporations responsibility for labor rights and environmental impacts. On Wednesday we discussed and debated about the article on the Apple Case Study and their allegations about labor rights violations with their offshore suppliers at Foxconn and others. In my group, we discussed a lot about whether or not that Apple should be responsible for these labor rights issues, even though their suppliers are in a different company and are not legally employed by Apple. We largely sided with the fact that they are responsible because they are still condoning and furthering the labor violations by knowing that it is happening and still working with these companies while demanding small margins. In the same class, we also watched the article about the small town in Brazil called Barcarena which is located near the Amazon river. Due to its location near the Amazon which is rich of the materials to make aluminum, the town is severely contaminated with toxic chemicals. The company near the town that produces alumina denies all allegations. I think it is crazy that they can deny these allegations due to all of the evidence from the tests from the citizens of the town that show the toxic chemicals inside of them.

 

Exploring: On the weekend, Ava, Bella, Emily, and I flew to Paris. When we arrived very late Friday night, our hostel had lost our reservation, so they had to find a different available room for us. The room also did not end up having air conditioning, so we were sweating all night. On Saturday, we walked to a café and got brunch, and then went to the Lourve. We spent nearly four hours in Lourve, and then we went to Angelina’s to get hot chocolate. We then went home and took cold showers and got ready for dinner. We ended the day by watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night. Because of the marathon that day, it took almost an hour to get home. The next day at our last day in Paris, we went to Cedric Grodlet’s bakery and went to the famous starbucks for coffee. Then we went to the Sac ru cor and the arc de triumph. We ended the day by getting Chipotle and then made our way to the airport. Our flight was delayed two hours but we ended up getting home around 1am. The rest of the week I spent in my free time going to the gym, making food, and some of us hung out downstairs outside on Wednesday night.

 

Exploring: The week began very well with a fun day trip to Lake Como. Bella, Ava, and I took the train into Varenna, which is absolutely beautiful. We had lunch at a restaurant up on the hill and I had one of the best pizzas so far in Italy. We then walked around and took a ferry boat over to Bellagio. We went to the beach for a little while, and then had to take the ferry back to Varenna not long after because thunder storms were coming in and we did not want to miss our train. Back in Varenna, we got some gelato and a quick dinner, and then went back to the train station to come home. On Tuesday night, Caroline and I went to get aperativos with our co-workers at one of the coolest places near our office. On Friday after work, I packed my bag and got ready for my flight to Paris where Bella, Ava, Emily, and I are going to spend the weekend.

 

Internship: This week at my internship started off very interesting. I worked remotely and there ended up being some miscommunication with when Caroline and I were finishing work to go to class. It all got worked out by the end of the end and everything was great the next day on Tuesday and throughout the rest of the week. It was a great learning experience for me and a real example of some of the cultural/workplace differences between Italy and the United States. This week I spent a majority of my time at work formulating one pagers for start-up companies that are going to be joining an event with Fin+Tech in two weeks. These one pages provide a summary of the company, their differentiators, country of incorporation, investment funding, partnerships, and a description of their product or service. Mostly all of these companies that we needed to research use a form of artificial intelligence and machine learning in their innovations. Between Caroline and I, we completed over 50 one pagers.

 

Class: Monday was a fun day in class as my group and I got to debate on the topic of whether or not the 2019 business roundtable revision is useful and will bring about change from the companies that signed it, or if it was a waste of time to write and read. Initially, my group and another group sat together while we were discussing this, and all of us agreed that it was a waste of time and the document pretty much outlined the obvious. However, in the debate, my group had to argue for the opposite side which we were not as prepared for. It is a big learning experience to have to try and come up with arguments and actually debate the opposing side of your own views and make it convincing. One thing that was interesting to me was that the other group that we debated against came up with completely different points to their argument than what we discussed in our conversations prior to the debate. Their main argument was that the document needed to mention specific measurements of how the companies will prove their progress to these statements that were being made in the document. On the other hand, we debated that that proposition was impossible considering all of the companies distribute extremely different products and services and that it is their duty to release their own reports on their specific commitments. In all, it was a great debate on both sides and it was a lot of fun.

 

Internship: I started the week by working remotely on Monday. I continued my search from last week of researching start-up companies that use artificial intelligence for budgeting and forecasting purposes. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I worked in the office and was given more tasks. Now that Polina, the director of our internship work, came back this week from vacation, she worked with Caroline and I further on enhancing our research. She also helped us formulate messages in contacting these startup companies that we found, and we had to respond to them and set up phone calls to explain to these companies more about Fin+Tech. I did not make a phone call yet on my own, but I was able to listen to Polina and the other intern, Francesco, make the phone calls and learn from them so that I will hopefully be able to do it on my own soon.

 

Exploring: I started out this week with an incredible day trip to Venice. I went with Emily and another friend and we had an incredible time getting lost in the beautiful, tiny streets of Venice. We started the day with a gondola ride through all of the canals and I learned that Venice is made up of 118 islands. After, we shopped around and went into five different leather stores, chocolate shops, and many jewelry stores. I bought myself a green leather purse and a black leather backpack, and then three leather wallets and a lot of chocolate as souvenir gifts for family. We then went to lunch and the pigeons would not leave us alone. Finally, we ended the day by visiting Piazza San Marco and the Rialto bridge. The rest of the week was mostly spent on class, homework, my internship, and reading in my free time. On Thursday night, we all went to dinner together for Sam’s birthday and that was a lot of fun. On Friday after class, I went with a couple of other people from the group to a cooking class where we learned to make pizza and gelato. It was a great experience.

 

Class: We started class this week by watching The Corporation documentary and I found this to be very eye opening. It basically described the falsities and ugliness that happens behind the scenes in corporations. I was shocked at the point in the documentary when the guy was being interviewed who talked about faking job interviews to competitor employees to find out more information about the competitor companies. The way he showed no remorse or guilt for tricking people and called himself a predator shocked me. In Wednesday’s class, we spent most of our time debating the Wall Street Journal articles. The first one we debated was about Merck Pharmaceuticals versus the US government and whether or not the US should be able to set prices for medical products. I personally do not think they should be able to because then Merck will not be able to make profits that then helps them conduct more research to find drugs for other illnesses. It also then would provide no incentive for pharma companies to even exist if the government is just going to regulate all prices. Next, we discussed an article about whether or not companies should make public statements on their opinion of social issues. In a perfect world, companies would not get involved in social issues that do not regard their business at all, and politics would stay separate from consumerism. However, that is very unrealistic and companies are constantly caught in the middle of social issues and oftentimes feeling like they have to make public statements about their opinions.

 

Exploring Italy this week has been a lot of fun. On Sunday, Bella and I walked all around Milan and went shopping on all of the small streets near Aparto. We both bought a lot of clothes for work and exploring Milan. On Monday I worked remote, so I had some more free time to explore. I got gelato and really enjoyed our dinner altogether at all you can eat sushi. On Tuesday, I forgot my passport for the last supper and had to take a couple of Uber’s to get there in time, but it was so worth it to see. I did not know anything about The Last Supper, so it was cool to learn more about and get to see in person. Tuesday and Wednesday nights were mostly spent doing homework and catching up on calls with family from home. Going into Verona on Friday, I had no expectations because I did not research it before we went as a group. It was so much more beautiful than I was expecting and I love all of the markets they had in their center square.

 

My internship this week was a lot more hands on, and we got more direction and specific tasks this week as well that was really helpful. On Monday, I spent it remote researching United States investors that would be interested in joining our program in investing in and helping start-up companies. On Tuesday and Wednesday, I was in person in the office where I got new tasks. On Tuesday, I started shifting my research to looking for start-up companies all over the world that utilize artificial intelligence for uses such as budgeting, forecasting, or other accounting services. On Wednesday, I narrowed my research to looking for companies with the same requirements, but start-up companies only being from either Germany, France, or Switzerland. I also continued this same research on Thursday working remotely from Aparto. Due to the very specific requirements that I needed to research, I found this task to be difficult, but my co-workers are very understanding and the other, more experienced intern has been very helpful.

 

Class this week focused a lot on governance and structure of businesses, specifically the differences between the shareholders and the stakeholders. I was really interested in the Wall Street Journal article that was presented on TikTok being banned in Montana. The talk of the potential security breaches with Tik Tok has been increasing over the past one to two years and I suspected bans on the app would arise soon. On one side, I do think that TikTok is a great outlet for businesses, content creators, and finding news (while I always validate and do my further research on alternative platforms), on the other hand, the thought of China being able to fully investigate my phone, see my location, and all of my information is scary to think about. Maybe banning it just for the military could be a good alternative instead of banning Tik Tok for all citizens, considering it provides a lot of positives as well.

 

 

The first two days of the internship consisted of mostly introduction and explanation of the business. They described the nature of their business and how each cycle of their program works. The year begins in February/ March with cycles one to three where they research and pick start-up companies to join their program. The program then begins around October and ends around February where the start-up companies are able to receive consulting and funding from investors to help progress their business. I was able to listen to practice calls and I have already been able to apply what I have learned in my major classes at school to my internship: topics such as convertible equity and investing. On the second day of the internship, I was tasked to research United States investors on LinkedIn that could be potential investors in their start-up company program and write a template message that I will send to them next week.

 

Toward the end of class when we went over the survey results from our raw thoughts of free markets and government regulation, I found the results very interesting. Building on the second question to answer why as consumers we do not necessarily fully trust corporations, I think this is primarily due to the self-interest of individuals. The only way companies can live and flourish is through the operation of people and employees. Therefore, due to the selfishness of everyone’s own success, this is why consumers need to be careful in the companies that they trust or do not trust. For example, when I come across a new business that I want to purchase from, I am usually skeptical at first, and unless I find any information or reviews convincing me otherwise, I trust the companies until they give me a reason not to. Furthermore, another reason that I do not blindly fully trust every company is due to the constant teachings of proper business ethics in a company. In almost every business class at Lehigh so far, the topic of ethics has been discussed. Even more so, in an entire course I took about fraud and errors that are inevitable in every business. It is important to understand that consumers do not get a full picture of all operations in a company and there is a lot happening behind the scenes that we must be tentative of. Finally, another reason that I think many consumers do not put full trust in companies is due to differences in morals. Depending on the importance of different issues to each consumer, that may not align with every company, and it is important for consumers to do their research of companies that they plan to buy from prior to purchasing.

 

While having been in Milan for less than a week, I feel like I have learned and seen a lot already. Before coming to Milan, I had expectations that it was going to be more of a built-up city and not have as much of a historic feel like other smaller European/Italian cities. The only photos I had ever seen of Milan prior to coming here were of the duomo, and I had expectations that that was the only major historic part of the city. Fortunately, I was pleasantly mistaken. Having chances to walk or use public transportation around the city and see all of the old architecture on the buildings is beautiful. Especially all of the small balconies and greenery all over the apartment buildings that have so much character. I also have already eaten pizza and gelato about two to four times so far and all have been amazing. Finally, one of the highlights so far was when we all went to a restaurant by the canals for Caroline’s birthday.