Day6 – CA Work Experience Program

Sixth Day Success- TTT

This morning was the company’s monthly TTT meeting (I don’t remember exactly what it stands for) but basically, the entire staff meets in the kitchen downstairs and has breakfast together while discussing the newest updates on current or prospective clients. Leaders of each team, for example, the head of the Wrangler account team informed others about the current status of specific clients. This month’s TTT was particularly exciting because it was the first back-in-the-office one since Covid! Some examples of new and important information from today’s meeting include FWV’s involvement in the PR for a new movie, as well as with Iggy Azalea’s new perfume, and a luxury spa (originating in Europe) that is coming to NYC!

the kitchen where everyone piles in for the TTT meeting!

Day 6- Phones for 5 Year olds?

Today was especially interesting at FWV because we were working with one of the newer clients. Relay, this company is creating a screenless smartphone for kids. it has a single button that can be used to contact a parent or friend. it was our job to go through the parenting magazines and blogs and talk shows and see which segments we could find to pitch the product too. We spent a lot of time perusing daytime television networks and figuring out which ones could feature this product.

Day 6- Journals

Today I set out on making a new reactor, sort of. I was going to find a new reactor to create, but by the time we would have ordered the materials I would be long gone. I did, however, read plenty of papers on various different experiments and had to determine which potential candidates were 1) reliable, 2) cheap, and 3) better at our desired temperature range than our current catalyst. To do this, I had to choose my search terms carefully and vet a lot of articles based on the reliability of the journal they were published in. Easiest way to do this is looking at the impact factor (average number of citations an article published in the journal gets in a year). Mechanical Engineering journals have fewer citations on average than the natural sciences, thus we are looking for something around Impact factor of 7 for a good journal and a likely good article.

Example article I would have to look at and determine whether to read

If I didn’t trust the data from research gate, I could look up the journal elsewhere and see that this journal has a different estimation on springer

Researchgate calculates Impact factor determined on the times an article is cited from their website, and this way I could vet this article

Day 6 at FHI 360!

Day 6 was just as fun as the rest of the days! Today, we learned a lot more about contraception, including some new innovative technologies that are in the works. One of which is an implanted contraceptive device that can be controlled wirelessly. The purpose of this is so users can decide whether or not they want to use contraception for a certain month. In other words, it is basically birth control that can be switched on or off from a mobile device- pretty futuristic, huh?

Different contraceptive/contraceptive-like devices and their properties.

After this, we walked down to Main Street in downtown Durham and had lunch at a small pizza restaurant called Pie Pushers. While I personally did not get anything, I tried a slice of RJ’s margherita pizza, and it was delicious! Sadly, I do not have a picture of the pizza, but I do have the picture of the restaurant- it had a very aesthetic interior!

Lastly, we had some free time to work on our projects, which we are almost finished with! All in all, it was a very informative, fun-filled day, and I cannot wait for tomorrow!

Day 6 – Editing

Today I was shadowing Maria, who is the Senior Director of Operations. We started off the day with some meetings trying to finalize and tweak a few things as BCBSWY transitions onto the HMHS platform. After a few meetings, I got the opportunity to edit and organize an intro to new services power point directed towards clients. The main things I search for when editing is ensuring consistency in style and organize ideas in a way that is easy to follow and understand from an outside perspective. After turning in my work on the revised power point, Maria and Taylor (who works with the communications team) assigned me some more similar work. I also revised and reorganized a provider notification letter (which is basically a letter to the customers that there has been a switch in vendors), documents explaining the COBRA administrative services through our LBS vendor, HRA open enrollment communications documents, as well as HSA open enrollment communications documents. I was also able to type up and finalize the documents to be sent out to whomever it concerns, whether that be a vendor, customer, or internal employees.

After my work day, I also got together with Connie, who is serving as my main host here, and her family for an authentic Wyoming steak dinner. It’s been great getting to know not only her staff here at BCBSWY, but also to get to know the HMHS team who is here working with them. I look forward to doing more good work tomorrow, and am sad that my work experience is coming to a close, but am excited for future ventures with both the HMHS and BCBSWY teams!

Speaking with Sylvan

Today was a very busy day at Cra – Z – Brain. Mr. Rothrock hurt his back, and was unable to come in, so I worked with the other full time employee at the Cra – Z – Brain, Joe. Joe used to be a special education teacher before working at Cra – Z – Brain. He is very funny, and extremely talented at keeping all kids involved and under control, while still maintaining a healthy level of discipline.

In the morning, I worked more on advertisements, and got in contact with a local tutoring and education company. Sylvan Learning is a company that works closely with students kindergarten through high school age to help assist with keeping grades up and standardized test prep. It can also be useful for kids who struggle in a specific subject or who have fallen behind in school. The purpose of reaching out to Sylvan was to create some sort of conjoined referral, membership or even discount to promote both companies and hopefully expose the clients to the other company. I called, and was asked to contact the manager via email. Due to Mr. Rothrock’s absence, I wrote an email, but did not send it. This is because this project would likely go beyond my internship, and I wanted his permission and approval before making any long term decisions for the company.

In the afternoon, I helped assist Joe in teaching the post-lunch class. Tomorrow I will be responsible for teaching the kids, not assisting.

SAS Work Experience Day 6

Today at SAS was my first day shadowing in finance. I got to meet a lot of people in the finance department who are involved in a variety of different tasks and areas such as tax, global finance, marketing, etc. We started off with an introduction and overview of the department, which set down a good base for the shadowing activity which followed, where we sat in on a meeting discussing some financial issues related to marketing. We also got to learn about some specific roles in the department, by learning in depth about the treasury and about tax. At the end of the day a few college students interning in the finance department took us to get ice cream, which was nice. Below is a picture of Building T, where the finance department is. It’s a very fancy building!!

Day 6

Today was Claudia and my second day with Dr. McElveen, but also our last. Yesterday, we saw the clinic side of Dr. McElveen’s job, and today we got to see him perform two procedures. We arrived at the Duke Raleigh Hospital around 7am, but didn’t go into the first surgery until around 8am. The first surgery was around an hour long and he performed the whole thing through the ear canal which was very impressive considering how small it is. Here are some magnified pictures of the prosthesis placed behind the ear drum.

The next surgery we watched was after lunch and lasted again, about an hour. This surgery required the patient to be under general anesthesia because a large incision was being placed behind the ear. After this surgery, Claudia and I headed back to the office where we were yesterday and worked with the audiologists for a couple hours. We both saw two patients. The first was coming in for a “check up” because they had recently been fitted with a sound arc (a device to help you hear). The second patient was in because his hearing aid had gotten wet and he needed to get loners while his were being fixed. After these two patients, Dr. McElveen came back from another surgery that he performed while we were working with the audiologists. We thanked him, said goodbye, and ended our day around 4:45pm.

Day 6- Toby From the Office

Following a slight schedule change, I was assigned to Human Resources for the next two days. HR works on how to motivate, attract, and keep the workers at SAS. I went back to Q Building with Megan to meet up with Kayla Woitkowski, head of the University Recruitment department and fellow Clevelander (Cavs in 6). Her job is to pitch SAS to college students across the US. They do they by having a list of schools and dividing them into 3 tiers: Tier 1 being where SAS sends people to recruit actively, Tier 2 where they help network with established connections to attract students, and Tier 3 which consists of sending information, such as flyers.

After briefly chatting with Kayla, we went to a presentation she gave to the college-age summer interns over how SAS is structured, including important terminology and the chain of command. Then it was on to lunch, where we ate with some other members of the college recruitment team. We met up with Kayla, who had to leave to get gas and chick-fil-e, where we discussed possible options for outreach for SAS. A large problem that SAS encounters is that it is targeting to companies rather than consumers. This makes it difficult for to establish national brand recognition with most Americans that don’t know about data analytics. We ended the day by listening in on a meeting that focused on advertising through Instagram.

~Neat and organized whiteboard of the HR Division

Day 6- Some Cool Technology

Today we spent lots of time working on our remaining two projects– the powerpoint for the theoretical acceptability of the micro-needle delivery system in India and Nigeria as well as organizing literature for adherence and retention of HIV care in Mozambique (both of which are real projects with which we are assisting FHI). While Krishan and I worked on the powerpoint, Salma and RJ worked on the literature organization to be most efficient. First we met with Dr. Ayres, a scientist working within the Contraception Technology Innovation Department. She described lots of new and innovative technologies being developed around the world. One is an oral pill in the shape of a hexagon that opens and can release a drug before reaching the intestines and can self-destruct in a sense if the pH of the intestine is detected! While this pill is not currently being developed for contraceptive use, it may be in the future. Also, a micro-chip is being made that will be inserted into a female with lots of one-month doses of contraceptive hormones that can be released remotely. Next we met with Dr. Harmon, a chemist who works with CTID and CAPRI (Contraceptive Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient Database). This database can be accessed from anyone on the internet through the organization’s agreement with the Gates Foundation and provides information on hormonal contraceptives. Lastly, we met with Dr. Burke who works in Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health. She talked about her work with the Uniject injection system that allows for women in Africa to administer their own hormonal contraception using a one-use needle.

Some drawings of the concepts discussed in our meeting with Dr. Ayres.