Internships!

Here at Fordham, I feel like interning has become some what of a second nature for students due to the fantastic location 20 minutes outside of Manhattan.  Talk to anyone you see walking around campus, and more likely than not they have interned at some point during their four years at Fordham.  I am a Business Administration major concentrating in finance and marketing, so it was really important to me to find an internship during my junior year that coincided with these fields.  At first I was really nervous --I mean why would anyone want to hire me?  Besides lifeguarding, I had no real work experience, and certainly none having to do with finance or marketing, but I applied to a number of different ones and ended up interning last spring and this past summer!

During the spring of my junior year, I interned at Bank of American Merrill Lynch.  I was one of two interns for the KKM Group, the largest and oldest private banking and investment team at Merrill Lynch.  During my time here, I was able to experience first hand what it is a private wealth advisor really does on a day to day basis.  It was a really valuable experience because it opened my eyes to what a career in wealth management would entail.  Basically, wealth advisors are responsible for providing tailored solutions to meet the complicated needs of ultra-high network individuals.  While I was not allowed to meet with any clients (that's reserved for the big bosses in the office!),  I was able to help facilitate meetings and solutions for these clients as well as do industry research that would be used by client associates.  Overall, I learned a ton at Merrill Lynch, but I don't know if it would be something that I could see myself pursuing as a living.  That's the great part about internships though --they're all about the experience and trying new things to see how you feel about it!

This past summer, I interned at Newedge USA, a global multi-asset brokerage firm located at Rockafeller Center.  I was the sole intern for the global marketing communications and branding team at Newedge, which was a team of twelve people who sat in various locations such as Paris, London, and Chicago.  During my ten weeks at Newedge, I learned all about branding and marketing within a financial services firm.  It was awesome because my boss along with everyone else on the team really let me get involved in various projects and initiatives that they were working on, and I became friends with people on my team who I still talk to today --I was sad to leave!  To me, this internship was perfect; it was a mix of learning as well as hands on experience and I can honestly say that marketing communications and/or branding is a field of work I could see myself really enjoying after graduation.