With my third week in Milan wrapping up, another class with Professor Gupta has passed and I’ve done a bit more within the city. Our second CSR class this week was canceled so we could have time to start working on our final projects. I started researching the ethical consequences of big pharmaceutical companies, which give access to life-saving drugs. In class, we mainly discussed accountability within corporations. Specifically, how management, the board of directors, and shareholders interact with each other when situations and scandals arise. A central point that arose within our readings and discussion was also where does the corporation lie in terms of social responsibility? As time has progressed, it really is the corporations that facilitate social change in nowadays. We finished the class with a group activity in which we had to present our answers to various ethical dilemmas, my group presented answers relating to GMOs and organic foods.

My internship this week also presented a bit more work than it has in the past. Compounding on last week’s research into Tempocasa, our supervisor tasked us to look outward at their competitors, and likewise analyze what works and does not work with their marketing strategies. We were finally given our own desks and set off to work for the week. The atmosphere within the office was very pleasant now that we had our own space to work. A lot of greetings, we met the 3 founders and the president of the company, and our one colleague who sits near us actually got married over the weekend so he was giving us a bunch of sweets. While finishing up our write-ups on each of Tempocasa’s biggest four competitors, our supervisor then asked us to create a presentation and asked if we could present next Monday, so that is what we have been working on for the rest of the week.

This week in Milan started with one of my friends randomly showing up in Milan unannounced and struggling to find him at the Duomo. I spent a lot of the day with him and we visited some of our more frequent restaurants and places. One specific highlight to mention that I will show below is the best pizza I think I will have throughout my trip which I ordered at a small, family-owned restaurant after class on Wednesday. I would not be surprised if that becomes a weekly dinner for me. Aside from that, when I was searching for dinner Thursday night, I stumbled upon what I thought was some sort of protest on the side of the canals. When I actually got involved though, I realized that it was just a marching band that was performing to draw attention to a company giving out their new beer product, hemp-infused beer. As the week comes to a close, I and I think many others are gearing up for our IES-led trip to Cinque Terre this weekend which should be a lot of fun.

Hemp-Infused Beer Product

Protest? Rally? Nope. Band giving out beer

GOAT pizza, spinach and ricotta

Fancy, fancy pasta dinner that lasted 45 seconds