Leavey Ambassadors Program Blogs

Living in the Bay Area and going to Santa Clara University, I’ve had few opportunities to leave the area and spend time living elsewhere. As such, it was exciting to hear that I had the chance to go to Seattle for the summer to do an internship! I spent my junior year summer at BlackRock as a Business Operations Intern with the Alternatives Client Services team, where I worked closely with hedge funds and investor relations. As a Management Information Systems major, I had very little experience with the finance industry, but throughout the summer, I was able to further my understanding of fintech.

At BlackRock, I worked with a team of 9 and supported them with daily investor relations, tax documents, and process documentation to streamline processes within the team. I developed a relationship with people outside of my team as well, and I made it a goal to have coffee chats with the office to get different perspectives on career trajectories. I met a ton of amazing and inspiring people, and I joined work extracurriculars that they were in, such as the Green Team (a sustainability group), Women’s Initiative Network, and an event planning team for an office-wide cultural diversity event. I’m happy to say that I felt supported during the internship and learned a lot about the finance industry.

In applying to BlackRock, SCU was helpful in providing me with an alumni network that I could reach out to with questions. I chatted with an alum before my interviews and got insight on what the company was like before I moved on to each interview phase. Being in Alpha Kappa Psi also helped me with resume formatting and handling tough interview questions, so I felt pretty prepared heading into interviews. A lot of my extracurriculars and experiences at Santa Clara University built me up to go through multiple phases of interviews and successfully find an internship during the year when it mattered, and it is exciting to see how much I’ll be able to give back as an alumni myself!