Christina Bott ’13, Fleishman-Hillard

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I was filled with excite­ment as I walked up to the Fleishman-Hillard offices in Atlanta, Geor­gia, a small stepping-stone from my home­town, New York City. As one of the top pub­lic rela­tions firms in the world, I knew that I absolutely could not miss out on an oppor­tu­nity like this and so I found myself fly­ing down south the night before the intern­ship. As I walked the two blocks from my hotel to the office cen­ter, I was shocked by the eighty-four weather-a tem­per­a­ture this New Yorker hadn’t expe­ri­enced since sum­mer! I entered the build­ing and was imme­di­ately redeemed with cold air-conditioning, “the mark of a true south­ern build­ing” I was told by fel­low intern Matthew Shack­elford ’15. Matthew and I met almost simul­ta­ne­ously at the front desk where we greeted by a friendly sec­re­tary and then our host, McCall Butler.

McCall But­ler ‘97, an alum of Prince­ton and later Dart­mouth, was the per­fect men­tor for us. She con­nected with Matthew on her con­nec­tion to Atlanta, where she was born and raised, and to me based on her expe­ri­ence work­ing in New York City. We spent just over an hour talk­ing with her about her back­ground and then her work with her main client AT&T. McCall had a very inter­est­ing his­tory, hav­ing started in gov­ern­ment con­sult­ing right of col­lege, and then work­ing at America’s Promise, a non-profit in DC, before going to busi­ness school. She then attended The Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth where she met her future pro­fes­sor, men­tor and employer Paul Argenti. Argenti, an expert in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has writ­ten many books about the field of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, most notably Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (fifth edi­tion, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2009) and Dig­i­tal Strate­gies for Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (McGraw-Hill, 2009). McCall had a chance to work with Argenti and Fleish­man Pres­i­dent and Senior Part­ner  Peter Ver­ren­gia dur­ing her time at Dart­mouth and then went on to work at Fleishman-Hillard. She has worked at Fleish­man for seven and a half years, work­ing for six years with AT&T. She cur­rently holds the posi­tion of Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner and works with her team on merg­ers, quar­terly earn­ings, the AT&T proxy state­ment, sup­port for the annual meet­ing and the annual report.

McCall then explained to us how we were going to struc­ture our day:

9–10:15 — Intro­du­tion with McCall
10:15–10:30 — Short cof­fee break
10:30–11:30 — Meet­ing with Michael Ares & Tammy Gon­za­lez
11:30–12 — Break and time to ask McCall more ques­tions
12–1:30 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team includ­ing Larry Solomon
1:30–2:30 — Lunch 2:30–3– Con­fer­ence Call with Larry Solomon
3–3:30 — Meet­ing with Chad Cor­ley
3:30–4 — Dis­cus­sion with Chad Cor­ley, Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom
4–5 — Con­fer­ence Call with AT&T Team

In our first meet­ing, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent Michael Ares explained his work with a global man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pany. He sum­ma­rized his role in say­ing that he essen­tially helps “pull in the resources to get what they need.” Given that I have inter­est in inter­na­tional pub­lic rela­tions, I found what he had to say about his clients’ global mar­kets in Brazil, North Amer­i­can and Europe very inter­est­ing. Tammy Gon­za­lez worked mainly with a man­u­fac­turer of indus­trial clean­ing prod­ucts and told us about how she was drawn into the field of Investor Rela­tions. She also gave us two arti­cles, one pub­lished in USA Today about a global phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany and another in the Wall Street Jour­nal about the  new energy efforts by a gov­ern­men­tal agency . She explained how PR com­pa­nies often pitch the essen­tial mes­sage of arti­cles to news­pa­pers in order to pro­mote their clients. Matthew and I were sur­prised to learn how many news­pa­pers get their sto­ries in this way and thus how much pub­lic rela­tions has an effect on world per­cep­tions and the mod­ern consumer.

The con­fer­ence call with the AT&T team was a very infor­ma­tive phone call and Matthew and I were even able to par­tic­i­pate in a very small way. Matthew and I were asked about what sorts of social media net­works we use includ­ing Pin­ter­est and Insta­gram and so we were able to see the impor­tance of knowl­edge of pop­u­lar cul­ture and social media in the PR world.

For lunch, McCall took us out to a Mex­i­can restau­rant where I was able to have my first south­ern sweet tea-delicious! We talked more about AT&T and its mes­sage and McCall’s expe­ri­ence at Prince­ton. We learned that she is a very active alum and will be cel­e­brat­ing her 15th reunion this year. She told us about her expe­ri­ence as an art his­tory major and also that she was pres­i­dent of her eat­ing club, Clois­ter, which I am also a mem­ber of. It was very excit­ing to get to make a con­nec­tion to McCall on a per­sonal level and I loved my quesadilla. 

McCall’s next phone call was short and dis­cussed much of what we had talked about before but in more detail. Next we met with Chad Cor­ley. Chad gave us more of a sense of what Fleishman-Hillard does since McCall works more with AT&T. Chad explained about Fleishman’s prac­tice groups and the details of his sec­tor: the con­sumer group. His group mainly works on how to encour­age con­sumers to use a cer­tain prod­uct whether via social media or other means. He talked about his work in business-to busi­ness PR ver­sus business-to-consumer PR as well. Then Matthew Browher and Andrew Groom entered the room and we dis­cussed their role in Dig­i­tal Media and more about how social media has affected PR. Besides get­ting to know McCall, this was prob­a­bly my favorite part of the day as it gave a really com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of PR and how it has changed global markets.

McCall’s last phone call included more work with AT&T and by that point, Matthew and I felt very involved in the process. After­wards we took some pic­tures at the office and wrapped up with McCall. It was all in all, a really award­ing expe­ri­ence and a fan­tas­tic trip. Matthew and I were really able to see how dif­fer­ent sec­tors of pub­lic rela­tions work and what tech­niques each group uses. We could not have asked for a bet­ter host in McCall and she gave me a deeper appre­ci­a­tion of what it means to be a tiger. Not only do I hope to be in this field one day, but I also aspire to be just as involved as a Prince­ton alum as she is.

David Zhao ’15, Spry, Inc.

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My fel­low Princeterns and I arrived at Spry Incor­po­rated not quite sure what to expect from our three day stay. We had read the mate­ri­als the com­pany had sent us and we had combed through its web­site, but what Spry actu­ally did was still not quite clear. How­ever, once we met Spry CEO Brooke Steven­son ‘01, the Prince­ton alum who brought us out to Mary­land, she showed us around the office and fully elu­ci­dated the company’s field of work. Spry endeav­ors to allow client com­pa­nies and cor­po­ra­tions to eas­ily search their data by con­nect­ing their indi­vid­ual data­bases that are often dis­jointed and inflex­i­ble. As she duly noted, scat­tered data pre­cludes any attempts at a thor­ough analy­sis, pre­vent­ing a com­pany from mak­ing impor­tant and piv­otal deci­sions in this fast-paced world that waits for no one. At the heart of their approach is the use of ontolo­gies to orga­nize the data. This kind of seman­tic archi­tec­ture empha­sizes the rela­tion­ships between infor­ma­tion, mak­ing it eas­ier to query for the desired answers. An equally impor­tant aspect of Spry is their agile approach to devel­op­ment. Instead of the tra­di­tional water­fall approach where a com­pany releases a sin­gle end-product after com­plet­ing devel­op­ment, Spry espouses an agile scheme that allows them to not only quickly turn over a work­ing inter­me­di­ate prod­uct, but also show clients real­ized value. The incre­men­tal releases allow Spry to eas­ily meet the ever-changing needs of its clients.

We quickly real­ized that this Princetern­ship was not going to be the typ­i­cal shad­ow­ing oppor­tu­nity. Instead, it was going to be much bet­ter. Usu­ally, it seems that those who shadow are given tasks that are either menial or bor­ing, but Spry was going to give us a crash course on seman­tic and query lan­guages so that we could develop a solu­tion to an exist­ing prob­lem. This was both excit­ing and refresh­ing; we were tack­ling an issue that no one else had ever solved. After learn­ing Tur­tle (Terse RDF Triple Lan­guage) to write ontolo­gies and SPARQL (SPARQL Pro­to­col and RDF Query Lan­guage) to write queries, we wrote a user-customizable query cre­ator in MDQO (Model Drive Query Ontol­ogy) that Spry will con­tinue to improve.

Spry Incor­po­rated has a casual dress code that many tech star­tups often have, but it also has a lively and enjoy­able atmos­phere that may not nec­es­sar­ily reside in com­pa­nies of any size. The employ­ees feel com­fort­able bounc­ing ideas around daily progress off their cowork­ers, regard­less of their senior­ity at the com­pany. Spry thrives on this mutual assis­tance atti­tude that nat­u­rally man­i­fests itself.

Spry Staff, David, and fel­low Princeterns

This Princetern­ship let me explore the new and constantly-changing field of ana­lyt­ics. Per­haps the most pro­found dis­cov­ery was that this sort of job exists. It is fill­ing a much-needed role in the relentlessly-expanding global data par­a­digm. The most valu­able knowl­edge I gained is that, accord­ing to many of the employ­ees with whom we spoke, learn­ing how to learn in col­lege is the most impor­tant thing to take away from those four years. Although the actual mate­r­ial of aca­d­e­mic courses is def­i­nitely impor­tant, the abil­ity to problem-solve proved to be the most help­ful skill from col­lege in their daily projects.

I would like to thank Brooke, Meg, Christina, and the rest of the Spry team for their immense help and sup­port dur­ing the Princetern­ship. They really made the three days stim­u­lat­ing and pleas­ant. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to other stu­dents, because I gained valu­able insight into my future plans. This expe­ri­ence has encour­aged me to con­sider ana­lyt­ics as a pos­si­ble career path. For that, I am also grate­ful to Career Ser­vices for offer­ing this program.

David Zheng ’15, Planned Parenthood Federation of America

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I entered the Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica national office at around 9 am and met Mr. Tobias Rodriguez ‘11, the alum­nus spon­sor of the Princetern­ship, at the door. He took me up to the sev­enth floor, where he works, and then intro­duced me to his cowork­ers and gave me a tour of the other floors in the build­ing. I even got to meet a per­son on one of the Planned Par­ent­hood advo­cacy posters! After this infor­mal tour, Tobias pre­sented me with a sched­ule of events for the day.

At 11 am, I met with Jon Knowles, Direc­tor of Sex­ual Health Infor­ma­tion. After he gave me a brief descrip­tion of his job – he makes pam­phlets and fact sheets on a vari­ety of sex-related issues such as sex­ual health and birth con­trol – we had a nice chat about the his­tory of Planned Par­ent­hood. We dis­cussed the cur­rent related polit­i­cal issues, Mar­garet Sanger’s con­tri­bu­tion to birth con­trol, and present day con­tra­cep­tive meth­ods. When asked what inspired him to work for Planned Par­ent­hood, Jon replied that he saw how unin­formed peo­ple were about issues regard­ing sex and he wanted to do some­thing about it. He even knew a girl in the 60’s who threw her­self down a flight of stairs in an attempt to cause a mis­car­riage. I left our con­ver­sa­tion with a few pam­phlets and fact sheets, what will surely be nice read­ing for my train ride back to Princeton.

Then Tobias, his coworker Alex, and I enjoyed a nice Chipo­tle lunch on the High Line. It doesn’t get much bet­ter than 70 and sunny in New York City!

When I got back to the office, I went to my 2 pm meet­ing with Cather­ine Lozada, a writer and edi­tor in Planned Parenthood’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ment. She informed me that Planned Par­ent­hood has no pub­lic rela­tions depart­ment, so com­mu­ni­ca­tions needs to act as a “legal eagle” in mak­ing sure that press releases are in accor­dance with the organization’s views and the views of the 79 affil­i­ates of Planned Par­ent­hood. Dur­ing this meet­ing, I watched Cather­ine copy edit a blog post for www.womenarewatching.org, the polit­i­cal action site for Planned Par­ent­hood. This spe­cific blog post was about how Vir­ginia gov­er­nor Bob McDon­nell signed a bill into law that forces women to receive ultra­sounds when they get abor­tions, despite him say­ing that peo­ple should be in con­trol of their health­care. Part of Catherine’s job is mak­ing sure blog posts like these get onto the polit­i­cal action web­site so read­ers are aware of the press­ing Planned Parenthood-related issues.

My last meet­ing of the day was at 4 pm with Ariel Kaplan, con­tri­bu­tions proces­sor of the devel­op­ment depart­ment. His floor han­dles the fundrais­ing aspect of Planned Par­ent­hood, and Ariel keeps the con­tri­bu­tions data­base up to date. In fact, he is even work­ing on a pilot project that aims at data­base inte­gra­tion across the coun­try with the dif­fer­ent Planned Par­ent­hood affil­i­ates to improve effi­ciency of con­tri­bu­tions pro­cess­ing. Ariel and I spent the most of our con­ver­sa­tion talk­ing about the Susan G. Komen con­tro­versy, in which the orga­ni­za­tion cut fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood. At the end of our chat, he touted the virtue of non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, inform­ing me that before work­ing here he was not polit­i­cal at all. He said he loves work­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood because of the “great health ben­e­fits, atmos­phere, and people.”

Over­all, I had an enrich­ing day work­ing with the Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica, and I am very grate­ful to Tobias for this oppor­tu­nity (and for the Chipo­tle). From the gen­uine kind­ness of every­one I met to the office penthouse’s fan­tas­tic view of New York City, I enjoyed every moment of this Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence. After hav­ing left the Planned Par­ent­hood office, I feel I have gained both greater insight into the work­ings of a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion and a deeper under­stand­ing of the all the issues related to the sex­ual and repro­duc­tive health­care Planned Par­ent­hood provides.

Yolanda Yeh ’15, Quirky

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Mak­ing inven­tion acces­si­ble. That is the con­cept, the rea­son why a boldly pur­ple com­pany exists – to empower peo­ple to invent and to give great ideas a chance to come to life. This is the mis­sion of Quirky, a rapidly grow­ing startup in New York City, where I had the plea­sure of spend­ing my spring break.

Although I only spent a few days there, this Princetern­ship gave me a unique win­dow into startup cul­ture, leav­ing behind the aca­d­e­mic rig­ors on cam­pus and begin­ning to under­stand the excite­ments of the entre­pre­neur­ial world out there. Warmly wel­comed by our Prince­ton alumni host Nikki Laf­fel Kauf­man ’07, and Suzan­nah Kerr on the first day, we were soon off, meet­ing peo­ple of all depart­ments that are grow­ing the com­pany together. 

I was exposed to a vari­ety of depart­ments I had never con­sid­ered, rang­ing from design to sales to oper­a­tions and more. Every­one was so pas­sion­ate about what they were doing, so will­ing to explain and answer any ques­tions, excited about the com­pany, pumped about the future, and invested com­pletely in their poten­tials and the power entrusted to them. Peo­ple hung out in the kitchen, joked out loud in the main work­ing space, laughed, thought, and through all of that – solved stim­u­lat­ing prob­lems with cre­ativ­ity and focus. I caught a glimpse of the chal­lenges each part of the com­pany wres­tles with and was more impor­tantly, inspired by the con­fi­dence with which each per­son approached these chal­lenges. Get­ting advice about every­thing from how to make the most of col­lege to prepar­ing for the life beyond, I learned not only about spe­cific career paths, but also more broadly about the value of tak­ing risks and jump­ing at oppor­tu­ni­ties that may take you on a path you may have never imagined.

Nikki Laf­fel Kauf­man ’07, Quirky Staff, and Princeterns

 

My Princetern­ship expe­ri­ence at Quirky ended with my par­tic­i­pa­tion in their company-wide prod­uct eval­u­a­tion meet­ing, a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence that exem­pli­fied col­lab­o­ra­tion and the open­ness of the Quirky com­pany cul­ture. My biggest take­away from the peo­ple at Quirky is the notion that it is by going for the things we love and work­ing hard at them that we give our­selves the oppor­tu­nity to find a career where work does not feel like work. I learned that most spe­cific skills can be picked up on the job so that it is really about pur­su­ing your curiosi­ties and devel­op­ing the capac­ity to think and prob­lem solve that can be applied any­where. As an aspir­ing inven­tor and entre­pre­neur, I believe my expe­ri­ence at Quirky was invalu­able and would strongly rec­om­mend it to any curi­ous stu­dents. Many thanks to my hosts and Career Ser­vices for giv­ing me this opportunity

Sebastien Wadier ’12, Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

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My Princetern­ship started off smoothly enough. The Los Ange­les Metro—or at least the Gold Line—was much faster than I expected, and I arrived at City Hall half an hour early. When I tried to get into the build­ing, how­ever, I was hor­ri­fied to real­ize that I had for­got­ten my passport—my only form of gov­ern­ment issued I.D. With­out my pass­port, I couldn’t even get a visitor’s pass, and I cer­tainly couldn’t get fin­ger­printed! I pan­icked and retreated to the food court. For­tu­nately, my host, Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough ‘75, soon showed up, calmed me down, and got me into the building.

Mar­cia spent the next hour or so talk­ing to me and Silvia—the other Princetern she was hosting—about her child­hood in Taos, New Mex­ico, her time at Prince­ton, and her career at the City Attorney’s office. Mar­cia has been work­ing at the City Attorney’s Office for over thirty years, in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent capac­i­ties, from pros­e­cu­tor to coun­sel to the fire depart­ment. Right now she is work­ing in the Munic­i­pal Advice Sec­tion, which means that she pro­vides legal advice to the Los Ange­les City coun­sel and other munic­i­pal entities.

One of Marcia’s pri­mary respon­si­bil­i­ties is advis­ing the over­sight com­mit­tee for the ‘L.A. for Kids’ pro­gram. ‘L.A. for Kids’ receives $25 mil­lion each year through a spe­cial tax assessed on all prop­er­ties in the city. This money is used to build parks and play areas for chil­dren. By law, projects built with this money need to meet cer­tain require­ments, and Mar­cia helps city agen­cies and non­prof­its under­stand what they need to do to meet these often com­plex requirements.

Our con­ver­sa­tion with Mar­cia was inter­rupted by a phone call: a city agency wanted advice regard­ing a pos­si­ble con­flict of inter­est. After answer­ing the agency’s ques­tions, Mar­cia took Sil­via and I to lunch at a Mex­i­can restau­rant on Olvera street. On the way back to City Hall, she pointed out land­marks down­town. Then, after a tour of City Hall, we climbed to a bal­cony near the top of City Hall and saw the same land­marks from above. On the way, we ran into a coun­cil­man, Tom LaBonge, who was giv­ing a tour to the Japan­ese con­sul gen­eral to Los Ange­les. We went back to Marcia’s office, where we met other city attorney’s, includ­ing Phil Lam, the city’s intel­lec­tual prop­erty lawyer.

The next day, after I got fin­ger­printed and received a vol­un­teer I.D., Sil­via and I went to a city coun­cil meet­ing. Mar­cia had explained the agenda to us, so we were able to fol­low most of what was hap­pen­ing. Tom LaBonge, the coun­cil mem­ber we had met the day ear­lier, rec­og­nized us at the meet­ing. After the meet­ing, we went to lunch with Mar­cia in Lit­tle Tokyo, where, com­pletely by chance, we met Char­lie, a friend of Marcia’s. Char­lie is a crim­i­nal defense attor­ney who takes only cap­i­tal mur­der cases. After lunch, Char­lie took us on a tour of the East Los Ange­les Supe­rior Court. We saw an arraign­ment, a prosecutor’s clos­ing argu­ment, and jury selec­tion. In each court, Char­lie explained what was hap­pen­ing to us.

On the morn­ing of the last day of my Princetern­ship, Mar­cia gave Sil­via and I sev­eral reports to read. The reports con­cerned the use of grant funds for the acqui­si­tion and devel­op­ment of prop­erty. The con­tent of these reports is impor­tant because it is later used to sup­port grant appli­ca­tions, and incon­sis­ten­cies or errors in the reports can pre­vent projects from being funded. Mar­cia explained the com­ments she made on some of the reports, and then asked us to review two oth­ers for incon­sis­ten­cies. After she dis­cussed the reports with us, Mar­cia got a call she had been wait­ing for. The city agency that had called on the first day of the Princetern­ship called to get fur­ther advice on a con­trac­tor they believed might have a con­flict of inter­est. Mar­cia explained that they were not pro­hib­ited from doing busi­ness with the client by munic­i­pal law under the cir­cum­stances, but could refuse if they thought it was too risky.

After she got off the phone, Mar­cia drove us to the Police Academy.

Sebastien and Mar­cia Gonzales-Kimbrough

We ate lunch at a 50’s style diner, and then walked around the acad­emy grounds. The area around the acad­emy has been turned into a beau­ti­ful rock gar­den, with water­falls, trees, and a med­i­ta­tion chapel. As we walked, Mar­cia explained the work she had done for the L.A.P.D. when she rep­re­sented them.

We returned to the court house, hop­ing to con­tinue watch­ing one of the tri­als we had seen the day before. Unfor­tu­nately, the court­room was empty, so we went to watch another trial. We saw a guilty ver­dict being read out, and then returned to Marcia’s office. There, we asked her a few more ques­tions about her career, and she told us about her expe­ri­ence bal­anc­ing her career with her fam­ily. We ended the day by going to a party where a judge who used to work in the City Attorney’s office was being hon­ored by the Latino City Attorney’s Asso­ci­a­tion. After the party, Sil­via and I said good­bye to Marcia.

The last three days had been amaz­ing. I have got­ten to see how Mar­cia advised the city on legal issues, met attor­neys prac­tic­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent areas of law, and seen the city gov­ern­ment and court sys­tem in action. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend any­one who wants to explore a career in law apply for this Princetern­ship if it is offered again in the future.

David Thomas ’13, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

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I arrived in Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas on Sun­day the 19th of March, a lit­tle unsure of myself in a part of the coun­try that I haven’t explored very much. I felt wel­come from the first night on, though, after a warm din­ner with fel­low intern Chris Diehl and our Princetern­ship host, Dr. Erika Petersen ‘96(’96). We learned about the oper­a­tions that Dr. Petersen had sched­uled through­out the week and got a taste of her favorite pizza place in Arkansas. Once we had the week out­lined, we started talk­ing about some of our com­mon expe­ri­ences at Prince­ton and what we could look for­ward to in med­ical school.

We started the first day early for me at 6:45 am, but I soon became aware that this was a bit late for by hos­pi­tal stan­dards. Chris and I put on scrubs and met with Dr. Petersen’s patients for the day. Pretty soon I was observ­ing my first surgery, and Dr. Petersen was care­ful to explain what she did and gave us a first­hand view of the pro­ce­dure. I was thor­oughly impressed with the expert knowl­edge of the body that Dr. Petersen dis­played in replac­ing an elec­tronic device that had been implanted in a patient. After fin­ish­ing with the first patient she imme­di­ately got to work on a more com­pli­cated case which made full use of the cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy of deep brain stim­u­la­tion. The patient whose surgery we observed had a notice­able alle­vi­a­tion of symp­toms for a dis­ease that I did not know could be treated so effec­tively, and I was really impressed to see it. We fin­ished off the day by observ­ing a spinal surgery that made use of another advanced tech­nol­ogy to stay min­i­mally inva­sive while mak­ing a dra­matic inter­ven­tion in the struc­ture of the spine.

On the next day at the hos­pi­tal, we got a broader sur­vey of what sur­geons at UAMS do. We started a bit later than the day before and split up between dif­fer­ent sur­gi­cal teams. Between me, Chris, and Arthur, another stu­dent observ­ing surg­eries for the week, we saw uro­log­i­cal surgery, car­dio­tho­racic surgery, and more neu­ro­surgery. This packed day wrapped up with Dr. Petersen per­form­ing a spine surgery on an awake patient while explain­ing each step to Chris and me. We said good­bye to Dr. Petersen but hung around the surgery wing to observe an open heart surgery. Watch­ing the heart beat inside a patient while the sur­geons went to work was a really inspir­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cially hav­ing stud­ied the heart so much with­out ever see­ing one in action. Later on Dr. Petersen took Chris and me to din­ner at a really impres­sive sushi restau­rant, and we had a good chance to debrief a lot of our expe­ri­ences and get a lit­tle more per­sonal insight on the life story of a doctor.

On the Wednes­day morn­ing of our Princetern­ship Chris and I man­aged to wake up early enough to fol­low the res­i­dents for morn­ing rounds. I’ve heard a lot about the intense lives of res­i­dents, so I was eager to see what things were like first hand. After find­ing our guide, a par­tic­u­larly help­ful res­i­dent named Dr. Gandhi, we started vis­it­ing patients and lis­ten­ing to their symp­toms and sta­tuses. The res­i­dents on rounds dis­played an impres­sive abil­ity to take in and put together a stream of infor­ma­tion about patients that needed diag­no­sis or treat­ment. Refresh­ingly, they all also seemed to enjoy their daily rou­tine a lot, despite the inten­sity of life as a neu­ro­surgery resident.

David, Dr. Petersen, and Chris

Fol­low­ing this, Chris and I observed the removal of a brain tumor by Dr. Day, the chair of neu­ro­surgery at UAMS. We watched him per­form the pro­ce­dure while fol­low­ing the steps in a book describ­ing the pro­ce­dure that a res­i­dent had pro­vided. Toward the end of the surgery we were sur­prised to learn that the author of this text­book was none other than Dr. Day him­self! This was a really art­ful surgery, with a lot to appre­ci­ate how much the patient’s life would improve directly as a result. We ended the day with a visit to Dr. Petersen’s clinic, which really put more of a human face on the prac­tices we had observed. Dr. Petersen seemed to really do her best to explain the tech­ni­cal side of com­plex pro­ce­dures to patients, who in turn really appre­ci­ated the trans­parency and com­pas­sion she showed.

The last day of my Princetern­ship was in some ways the most excit­ing. I was lucky enough to see Dr. Petersen her­self remove a very seri­ous tumor from a patient in a very involved pro­ce­dure which I was able to observe start to fin­ish. Also, Dr. Petersen sent a sam­ple of the tumor down to the hospital’s pathol­ogy unit, and I got a chance to see this other part of the hos­pi­tal as well. The pathol­o­gist there clas­si­fied it and explained what to look for and the sever­ity of dif­fer­ent types of brain tumor. Luck­ily for me, Dr. Petersen fin­ished this very thor­ough tumor removal in time to grab a final bite to eat with me before I made my way to the air­port to fly home.

We ate with Arthur and Dr. Gandhi and had a con­ver­sa­tion that was enlight­en­ing for me about the role of research in med­i­cine. Dr. Gandhi, an MD/PhD who worked on metab­o­lism of neural cells dur­ing his PhD, had a lot of insight to share with me since I’m inter­ested in pur­su­ing an MD/PhD and I’m involved in metab­o­lism research. Dr. Petersen also shared a few thought pro­vok­ing sto­ries about the his­tory and future of neu­ro­surgery research. I left that night with noth­ing but pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences from my Princetern­ship, for which I really have to thank Dr. Petersen for care­fully set­ting up such an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence for under­grads. I would highly rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to future stu­dents as an oppor­tu­nity to get a first hand view of the prac­tice of med­i­cine and the pos­i­tive things it can bring about.

AJ Swoboda ’15, Famzoo.com

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I spent three of my Spring Break days work­ing with the CEO of FamZoo.com and Prince­ton Alumni, Bill Dwight ‘84. As a start up with only two employ­ees, Fam­Zoo “head­quar­ters” are located in Bill’s house in Palo Alto, CA. Fam­Zoo is an online vir­tual credit union that helps kids learn good money man­age­ment skills.

I started my first day, Mon­day, being toured around his home and office, fol­lowed by a 30-minute Skype chat with Bill and Chris Beau­fort — FamZoo’s other employee and Bill’s for­mer Prince­ton room­mate — about what they do each day, where they’re try­ing to direct the com­pany, etc. After our chat, Bill con­tin­ued to describe all that he does at Fam­Zoo. He talked about how he makes deci­sions (based heav­ily on ethics), how he inter­acts with users on FamZoo’s web­site, and finally how the com­pany has recently shifted and realigned its focus group — first, the com­pany focused on get­ting month-to-month pay­ments made by indi­vid­ual fam­i­lies, but now it has shifted to big­ger reg­is­tra­tion time peri­ods and has switched to focus­ing on sign­ing credit unions  and banks to make part­ner­ship deals. Bill also showed me how he keeps track of every con­nec­tion he or Chris has made in the past. Through using a pro­gram called High­Rise, Bill can effi­ciently man­age con­tacts, remem­ber how Fam­Zoo is con­nected to indi­vid­u­als and com­pa­nies, and find appro­pri­ate times to fol­low up with said contacts.

After get­ting sand­wiches for lunch, Bill and I came up with a project for me to work on on the side as I con­tin­ued to watch/learn from Bill’s day-to-day oper­a­tions. It was my job to fig­ure out how Fam­Zoo can increase its com­pany pres­ence on LinkedIn.com, and then begin to imple­ment some of these changes.

AJ and Bill

Tues­day was filled with two major events. First, I lis­tened in on a demo-call that Bill gave to a poten­tial Credit Union part­ner that was inter­ested in work­ing with Fam­Zoo. Through the hour long demon­stra­tion — which Bill knocked out of the park — I got a first-hand look at what FamZoo’s hard sell looks like, how Bill politely inter­acts with his cus­tomers, and the sheer power of a web­site like Fam­Zoo. I spent the remain­der of the day fill­ing out FamZoo’s LinkedIn Com­pany Page. I researched what all com­pa­nies can do on LinkedIn, talked with Bill to pin­point the best options, and then began to add ban­ner images, links, and descrip­tions to the page. The rest of the after­noon flew by as I exper­i­mented with addi­tions to the LinkedIn page.

My last day, Wednes­day, started with another demon­stra­tion with yet another poten­tial credit union part­ner — one of the biggest credit unions in the US in terms of cap­i­tal. After this sec­ond demo, I fin­ished off the day design­ing and edit­ing FamZoo’s LinkedIn Page. I left with the final “prod­uct” being a three step sequence for view­ers to fol­low in order to learn more about the com­pany, find out how they can part­ner with Fam­Zoo, and see all the reviews of Fam­Zoo from tons of credit unions and users of the web­site. Finally, I spent some time tin­ker­ing around with the web­site and all of its func­tions, and giv­ing Bill any feed­back I had dur­ing that time.

This blog pretty much sum­ma­rizes all that I did dur­ing my time with Fam­Zoo. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Princetern­ship pro­gram, it’s well worth your time.

Matthew Shackelford ’15, Fleishman-Hillard

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For my Princetern­ship with Fleishman-Hillard in Atlanta, Geor­gia, I had the priv­i­lege of shad­ow­ing Ms. McCall But­ler ‘97 a Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and Part­ner at Fleishman-Hillard who leads finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the firm’s AT&T Inc. account. She began my action-packed day by explain­ing how she came to work at Fleishman-Hillard through her early con­sult­ing work at Price­wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers, her MBA from the Tuck School of Busi­ness at Dart­mouth, and finally, her land­ing at Fleishman-Hillard as a part of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­sult­ing World­wide divi­sion, a voca­tional route that she her­self described as “slightly cir­cuitous.” Then, she talked about her work with AT&T, specif­i­cally the company’s finan­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and how, while the advent of the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing age and social media had altered the medi­ums through which com­pa­nies com­mu­ni­cate, the basic prin­ci­ples of any pub­lic rela­tions and/or brand man­age­ment remain the same: hon­esty and con­cise­ness. Though the tone of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions was slightly more con­ver­sa­tional, peo­ple always val­ued clar­ity and integrity in pub­lic rela­tions above all else.

Next, Mr. Aeres and Ms. Gon­za­lez talked about their work with com­pa­nies, such as two com­mer­cial mate­ri­als pro­duc­ers based in Atlanta. They dis­cussed the wide vari­ety of work that Fleishman-Hillard does for its clients, includ­ing the restruc­tur­ing of inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, analy­sis of busi­ness pro­pos­als, and investor rela­tions. More­over, they dis­cussed the strengths that Fleishman-Hillard has in its vast net­work of offices all over the world that spe­cial­ize in the var­i­ous types of work that the firm does for its clients. One of the many keys to Fleishman-Hillard’s suc­cess in the pub­lic rela­tions indus­try is the coop­er­a­tion that occurs within the firm to give the client the best pos­si­ble prod­uct and experience.

After­wards, Ms. But­ler had a con­fer­ence call with Mr. Solomon, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent — Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for AT&T, and his lead­er­ship team. Dur­ing this call, the group dis­cussed the company’s focus on the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. Among other things, recog­ni­tion for AT&T’s com­mit­ment to deliver a supe­rior cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is one task that Ms. But­ler and her team pur­sue each and every day.

Ms. McCall But­ler, Matt, and fel­low Princetern Christina

We also met with Mr. Cor­ley, a team mem­ber in Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta’s Con­sumer Group, and Mr. Browher and Mr. Groom, who lead dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions ini­tia­tives for the Fleishman-Hillard Atlanta office. The group dis­cussed the need for cred­i­bil­ity when it comes to pro­mot­ing a busi­ness and the impor­tance of design­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions to a company’s tar­get audi­ence and ulti­mate com­mu­ni­ca­tions goal.

Accord­ing to Mr. Cor­ley, pub­lic rela­tions are much more con­vinc­ing and effi­cient if the infor­ma­tion and argu­ment for a par­tic­u­lar com­pany or prod­uct comes from a third-party source rather than an adver­tise­ment. Thus, Fleishman-Hillard works to pro­mote its clients to, for instance, tech­nol­ogy blog writ­ers or news­pa­per jour­nal­ists by giv­ing these third par­ties oppor­tu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence clients’ prod­uct or ser­vices. As a result, Fleishman-Hillard can deliver more mean­ing­ful and cred­i­ble cov­er­age for its clients and their prod­ucts. Mr. Browher dis­cussed the need to deter­mine the tar­get audi­ence and use that infor­ma­tion to cre­ate a more effec­tive pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign for that tar­get audi­ence. This allows clients to effi­ciently mar­ket to their con­sumers, even if they are on a tight budget.

This Princetern­ship was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence for all that it taught me about the world of mar­ket­ing and pub­lic, finan­cial, and investor rela­tions and for all of the bril­liant and moti­vated indi­vid­u­als that I had the honor of meet­ing dur­ing my expe­ri­ence. Every­one was extremely wel­com­ing and gra­cious to me, and I was very pleased at the fact that they all were will­ing to spend their time to edu­cate me. I would like to thank Mr. Aeres, Ms. Gon­za­lez, Mr. Solomon, Mr. Cor­ley, Mr. Browher, and Mr. Groom for tak­ing time out of their busy sched­ules to speak with me. Most impor­tantly, I would like to thank Ms. McCall But­ler for offer­ing to host this amaz­ing Princetern­ship and being such a won­der­ful men­tor dur­ing this won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity. This Princetern­ship was truly one-of-a-kind.

Ryan Peng ’14, Hanweck Associates

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Mon­day, March 19, 2012

I arrived at Han­weck Asso­ciates a cou­ple of min­utes before 9 am. Dr. Han­weck intro­duced us to every­one in the office and explained a bit about what his firm does on a day to day basis, although each day is dif­fer­ent and can be unpre­dictable! Shortly after­wards, the big news of Apple announc­ing a div­i­dend pay­out to its share­hold­ers reached the office, so most peo­ple were work­ing on updat­ing the data­bases of option pric­ing infor­ma­tion. After every­one set­tled down into nor­mal work, Wes­ley, the other Princetern, and I talked with Dr. Han­weck and started to ana­lyze his­tor­i­cal data on div­i­dend pay­out dates and amounts. Using Excel, we com­pared the actual dates and amounts to pre­dicted dates and amounts pro­vided by two ven­dors in order to see if the ven­dors were doing a good job. This is impor­tant because Han­weck Asso­ciates buys this div­i­dend pre­dic­tion data from the ven­dors and uses it in their cal­cu­la­tions and mod­els. We worked on this for the rest of the day and decided to switch from Excel to C++ in order to parse the data more effi­ciently. Through­out the after­noon, we got to talk with the asso­ciates in the office and learn more about what projects they were work­ing on – lots of cool stuff all going on at once! At the end of the day, we sum­ma­rized what we found and talked with Dr. Han­weck and Andy before leav­ing the build­ing at 6.

Tues­day, March 20, 2012

On the sec­ond day, we started off by fin­ish­ing up details on the div­i­dend pay­out com­par­isons. We found some inter­est­ing pat­terns and results in the data, so we noted those and passed them on to next per­son who would be using them. After lunch, we started on our sec­ond project with the help of Jeff and Dr. Han­weck. The goal of this project was to build a com­puter pro­gram that approx­i­mates the Hes­ton model option pric­ing equa­tions, using the results of an ear­lier aca­d­e­mic that derived first and sec­ond order approx­i­ma­tion with sto­chas­tic cal­cu­lus. We decided to imple­ment this in Java, and we worked on this till the end of the day. It was def­i­nitely a tough project for us since the equa­tions were pretty com­plex, and the paper was hard to fol­low since we had to grasp some hard math­e­mat­i­cal ideas in order to under­stand the first and sec­ond order approx­i­ma­tions. By the end of the day, we had a func­tion­ing pro­gram that com­plied but gave the wrong numer­i­cal results. We chat­ted with Dr. Han­weck about what his com­pany does and about dif­fer­ent option pric­ing meth­ods before we left the work­place at 6:30.

Wednes­day, March 21, 2012

Ryan, fel­low Princetern Wes­ley, and Dr. Jerry Hanweck

Today, we con­tin­ued to work on the Hes­ton model approx­i­ma­tion. We started off by going through the entire pro­gram to trace what hap­pens at each step and to make sure that we put in all the approx­i­ma­tion for­mula com­po­nents cor­rectly. With some help from Dr. Han­weck and a few oth­ers, we located some bugs in our code and fixed them. Now, our code was get­ting closer to the right num­bers but was still off by about one per­cent. We decided to go for lunch and brain­storm ideas on how to per­form addi­tional test­ing. Since we did not know for sure whether this was caused by bugs in our code or whether this error is inher­ent in the approx­i­ma­tion itself, we decided to look in aca­d­e­mic jour­nals for numer­i­cal data and results done by oth­ers. After lunch, we found some data and com­pared it to our results and saw that we matched their results fairly closely. We fin­ished up the pro­gram by clean­ing up the vari­ables and adding some extra com­ments so that the next per­son who works with this code can bet­ter under­stand what we were doing. It was get­ting close to the end of the day, and I couldn’t believe how fast this Princetern­ship went by! We looked around the work­place and talked with oth­ers to see what they were cur­rently work­ing on. After­wards, we fin­ished the day by chat­ting with Dr. Han­weck about what we had done with the Hes­ton model approx­i­ma­tion project. Over­all, I greatly enjoyed this Princetern­ship and learned a lot through hands-on expe­ri­ence. I was able to apply some of the mate­r­ial I had learned in ORF 335: Finan­cial Math­e­mat­ics, so the prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence nicely com­ple­mented the the­ory I had learned in the class­room. I would like to thank Dr. Han­weck, Andy, Jeff, and every­one else at Han­weck Asso­ciates who shared their knowl­edge and sto­ries with us. It was a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence, and I am look­ing for­ward to work­ing at a finan­cial firm again.

Buyan Pan ’15, Dominion Fertility

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Day 1

My host, Dr. John Gor­don ’85 picked me up in DC at 7:15 in the morn­ing to drive over to Domin­ion Fer­til­ity Clinic in Arling­ton, VA. He intro­duced me to the nurses and Dr. DiMat­tina, who founded the clinic. Early in the morn­ing, I watched Dr. G per­form vagi­nal ultra­sounds for sev­eral patients. It was really inter­est­ing to see how they were at dif­fer­ent stages of var­i­ous treat­ments: for some patients, Dr. G was look­ing at the thick­en­ing uterus lin­ing and how the ovaries were doing, and for one patient, we could already see 20 fol­li­cles in the ovaries from stim­u­lated growth, ready to be col­lected for IVF. The most fas­ci­nat­ing one was being able to see the embryo inside the uterus of one of the patients and hear its heartbeat.

Around 10:00, some patients came in for con­sul­ta­tion, which I got to watch Dr. G do in his office. It was insight­ful for me to learn how Dr. G inter­acted with the patients. He was frank and reas­sur­ing when giv­ing them advice, explain­ing all the dif­fer­ent options that were suit­able for each couple’s sit­u­a­tion, like stim­u­lated vs. nat­ural IVF, frozen embryo trans­fer vs. using fresh embryos, and the dif­fer­ent tests for a cou­ple who wanted to know where they stood in terms of fer­til­ity. It was almost over­whelm­ing that there were so many dif­fer­ent fac­tors to con­sider when a cou­ple was decid­ing on the right pro­ce­dure for them, like what would be best emo­tion­ally, finan­cially, health-wise, etc. I was sur­prised to learn that the cou­ples who come to the clinic are from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, not nec­es­sar­ily all from Vir­ginia, because Domin­ion Fer­til­ity is the only clinic where the per­cent­age of IVFs per­formed are as high as 70% nat­ural cycle IVF as opposed to stim­u­lated cycle. Since nat­ural cycle pro­duces only one egg and hence one embryo, it makes the suc­cess­ful preg­nancy rates seem lower for a clinic, and that’s why not many of them are will­ing to offer the nat­ural. One final pro­ce­dure that Dr. G per­formed before lunch was assist­ing in the col­lec­tion of an egg. While Dr. G was with the patient, I went into the lab with Dr. Ning and saw the actual col­lected egg under the micro­scope, which was amaz­ing. Dr. Ning cleaned the sur­round­ing of the egg and stored it at the opti­mum tem­per­a­ture and con­cen­tra­tion of CO2.

After a quick lunch out, I had some cool con­ver­sa­tions with Dr. G about life at Prince­ton and about how he decided on repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy after hav­ing really enjoyed it dur­ing his residency.

When we got back, I fol­lowed Dr. Ning again and saw the same egg, this time being fer­til­ized by intra­cy­to­plas­mic sperm injec­tion (ICSI) and inserted back into the uterus of the patient.

I really felt what Dr. G meant when he said that there was a sense of grat­i­fi­ca­tion and accom­plish­ment, as I went through in my head all the patients that we had seen today: from cou­ples seek­ing the right treat­ment to those going through the pro­ce­dures, to the patient who con­firmed her preg­nancy and heard her baby’s heart­beat, and finally to the cou­ple who brought in their adorable twin babies. It’s a really won­der­ful thing to see both Dr. G and the cou­ple so happy when the treat­ments bear fruit.

Over­all, the day at the clinic was very busy, with con­stant patient inter­ac­tions, ultra­sounds, phone calls, fil­ing data, and all kinds of pro­ce­dures. But it was really help­ful to get expo­sure to this kind of work envi­ron­ment and see all the dif­fer­ent aspects of a typ­i­cal day in the clinic.

DAY 2

Buyan and Dr. Gordon

We started the day early this morn­ing at INOVA Fair­fax Hos­pi­tal, where Dr. G gave a lec­ture on pri­mary amen­or­rhea to the hospital’s res­i­dents and stu­dents at GW and VCU. He talked about the ques­tions that a doc­tor would ask a patient if she had delayed puberty and about the dif­fer­ent paths that would be taken in giv­ing her treat­ment. It was great to see the aca­d­e­mic side of things after get­ting to know the clin­i­cal set­ting yes­ter­day. Dr. G’s lec­ture was really inter­ac­tive and he asked a lot of ques­tions to engage his students.

After the lec­ture, we went to the clinic in Arling­ton. Dr. G had three patients whose eggs were ready for col­lec­tion, so while he was with his patients, I got to go into the lab again to watch Mark, one of the embry­ol­o­gists, go through the process of stor­ing the col­lected eggs. He let me look into the micro­scope and explained to me how a darker cumu­lus around an egg could be an indi­ca­tion of egg imma­tu­rity, how to ster­il­ize a pipette, how it’s used to trans­fer the egg into a medium for stor­age, how a des­ic­ca­tor is used to cre­ate the opti­mum envi­ron­ment for the eggs, and finally how they’re stored. The whole process was really com­plex and involved so much detail!

Around noon, we drove out to go to INOVA Fair Oaks Hos­pi­tal, where Domin­ion Fer­til­ity had an office. Dr. G per­formed ultra­sounds for a patient and did some con­sult­ing for another patient and her hus­band about treat­ments for ovar­ian cysts. On the drive back, Dr. G and I talked about the dif­fi­culty of iden­ti­fy­ing causes of cysts, espe­cially given all the dif­fer­ent types. We had some stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sions about the eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions and med­ical dif­fi­cul­ties in pro­vid­ing can­cer and HIV patients with fer­til­ity treatments.

Back at the clinic in Arling­ton, Dr. G had a meet­ing so I went into the lab to see the eggs that were col­lected ear­lier go through the intra­cy­to­plas­mic sperm injec­tion (ICSI) process. I found it really fas­ci­nat­ing that there was so much dex­ter­ity involved in it. Mark and Jerry oper­ated the pipettes with a lot of accu­racy and care under the micro­scope, and I watched each moment a sperm was injected into an egg. It’s amaz­ing to think that such a del­i­cate process which pro­vided an alter­na­tive solu­tion to so many infer­tile cou­ples was dis­cov­ered by acci­dent by a Bel­gian sci­en­tist, as Dr. G had told me earlier.

DAY 3

We started the day off at the Fair Oaks office with some ultra­sounds and con­sult­ing for patients, and again it was really nice to see a cou­ple who suc­cess­fully had a baby from a pre­vi­ous treat­ment come back because they were ready for a sec­ond child. Back in Arling­ton, I got to see some more egg col­lec­tions and the whole process of stor­ing them in the lab. Then Dr. G went through the usual sched­ule of con­sult­ing, dis­cussing the dif­fer­ent treat­ment meth­ods — from least to most proac­tive — with each couple.

I learned so much over the course of my three days with Dr. G. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to other stu­dents. It’s a really good place to explore your inter­ests if you’re look­ing at med­i­cine as a career. Repro­duc­tive endocrinol­ogy is a very spe­cial field too, and the clinic is a unique, sought-after place where so many dif­fer­ent patients go because of the avail­abil­ity of nat­ural cycle IVF which is rarely offered else­where. Because of that, you’ll get to meet all kinds of patients and see how the doc­tors and nurses inter­act with them. Also, Dr. G is out­go­ing, help­ful, and under­stand­ing, and on the way to dif­fer­ent places, we had really inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions about his expe­ri­ences at Prince­ton, career choices, the daily life of doc­tors, eth­i­cal or polit­i­cal issues that they face, and any ques­tions that I might have. I def­i­nitely had an inspir­ing Spring Break, and I’m really grate­ful to Dr. G and all the staff at Domin­ion Fer­til­ity for this won­der­ful opportunity.