Today at FWV was all about influencers. In a marketing company these people are the most important. They get word out about product to the general public and make it more appealing and accessible. It was our job to find these influencers for the opening of a new gym. O2 fitness is reopening its store and we were tasked with finding influencers who lived specifically in Raleigh and had an intrest in fitness and lifestyle.
My last day at my work experience program was an emotional one. I spent some time with Mr. Rothrock doing a recap of what I accomplished these past two weeks. In a brief overview, I assisted with the leading of several camp activities, as well as planned curriculum and conducted my own activity without the assistance of the other councilors. I learned how to budget, and learned how to calculate how much income it takes to break even with the costs of rent, materials and employee pay. We also reviewed the 7 total marketing things I made for the company, including ads and business cards. I provided him with a list of people who replied yes upon my questioning about whether or not we could display advertisements on their location. I handed out gifts to the employees and then Mr. Rothrock had to leave to continue with the preparations for the opening of the second Cra – Z – Brain location.
In the afternoon, I led a camp game. Considering it was the last day of camp and most of the campers track back in on Friday, they were very well behaved. After the game, we cleaned up the camp and set up for next week, and I said my final goodbyes. I really enjoyed my experience and am so glad I had the opportunity to experience something like this!
Today was the last day at Kellogg’s Cary Bakery. I quickly found the bakery to be like a new home, and I’m sad to say goodbye. The morning held only VBA coding for me: Gary’s new problem needed a solution, STAT. Thankfully enough, due to my prior project in the same file, I had the right skillset! Rick had a busy morning, being triple booked with meetings, which gave me ample time to work out a solution. The solution wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. The best thing is: the solution I delivered stood up against HOURS of attempts to break it. Gary ended up being so thankful for the two solutions I provided that he treated me to lunch; we went to my favorite spot (Chipotle) and discussed, among other things: potential colleges, life advice, schooling advantages, the state of programming languages, and his future. Having exchanged contact information, I’m looking forward to furthering our newfound friendship. Furthermore, due to VBA coding supposedly being a lucrative field (as no one uses the language anymore), I’ll be looking to work as a coding contractor when I’m 18 (assuming everything goes to plan).
Initially I supposed to shadow Okey, Seth, or Nik today; however, there’s always time in the future for that. Instead, I solidified new friendships and furthered my connection with the people who defined my Kellogg’s experience: Rick, Gary, Bobby, and Donna (sadly, Cristie was out today). I Hope to see them in the future; until then, Be Safe! Take Action!
My 7th day at SAS was my 2nd day shadowing in the finance department in Building T. Today I got to meet a few different people and learn what they all do within their specific jobs. Some areas I had the chance to learn about were budgeting and forecasting, internal audit and intercompany. It was very interesting getting an overview of many different tasks and roles within finance and learning the paths many different SAS employees have taken to get where they are today. Also, in the morning we got to sit in on a staff meeting where many of the people we’d met came together, which was also interesting since we got to see how the different roles interact and are relevant to one another, and how no one at SAS is totally isolated in their work since it is for a broader and more meaningful purpose.
Below is a picture of Building T, where I spent the day:
Today we focused on the social media bulking because there was a lot of time in the car two and from appointments today. The way business is structured today, Tiffany uses her social media platforms to make her brand well known and accessible to as many potential clients as possible. While mixing in pictures of her business and personal like, Tiffany paints a very real image of herself on social media so that when we use tactics like joining Facebook groups or following people on Instagram, it looks like a real person and a real brand. Today we did just that. We also had tenants moving into a rental property. Typically, agents get a larger percent of the commission for a month rent because rent is obviously a lot lower than the price of houses. Tiffany charges flat $200 plus 8% of a months rent to be an agent. This can be, however, much more lucrative if the rental she finds tenants for are her own properties. Because she manages many rentals with a range of price points and locations, being a rental agent is often times to her advantage. 
After many days of taking measurements and reading articles, today is the day for work. I was tasked with creating a fresh reactor by following the steps a previous student had detailed in her thesis (a process she had adopted from a different article). We had all the necessary materials, containers, and devices to create this catalyst, we only needed the time. Yesterday we started the process by calcinating a sample of ~200mg of zirconium oxide which would be our base for about 4 hours (we heated it up at 400 degrees C for 4 hours). Today I started by calculating the amount of Ruthenium Chloride Hydrate needed to add to the base. This was tricky. We wanted a final catalyst mixture that had 4% of the weight being consisted of pure ruthenium. We did not add pure ruthenium. I had to determine how much of the salt to add to get a hypothetical return of 4%. After being stuck in the lab for months, the zirconium oxide had acquired some moisture and lost a lot of mass after being calcinated, which means the calculation wasn’t made with the original 200mg but with ~120mg of zirconium oxide. After dissolving the salt into water, mixing, adding the base, mixing, and filtering for a solid half an hour (almost 15 runs through a quartz glass filter) I had distilled a solid nanoparticle catalyst. This was then stuffed into a glass tube between two packages of quartz glass fiber and, voila! We have a brand new reactor, ready to be tested tomorrow.
Today at FHI 360 we had a very busy day! We had meetings with many people at the organization. We met with the procurement team, who works on providing products for various projects that FHI is involved in. An example is special Toyota Land Cruisers, which are used for projects in developing countries. This team gave us some yo-yos from one of their sponsors, which we thoroughly enjoyed playing with!
After this, we met with Hannah Goetz, who is a C.A. alum herself! She told us all about her path from Cary Academy to FHI, and needless to say, it sounded like quite the journey!
Next, we learned about in field studies (specifically in India) from one of the members of the FHI team. We got to look at books given to adolescents in India, which were very interesting.
Finally, we met with the team from regulations, and learned about how studies performed by FHI are properly regulated. Honestly, I didn’t know there were so many rules!
Today, I started my day at 9:00 a.m. meeting for coffee with Kate Ulveling, a marketing intern. Kate and I met so that she could tell me more about her job. We met last week briefly, but she wanted to meet with me again, so we could go over some more things. At 10:00 a.m. I met with a woman in HR named Katie Henry. Katie’s job was different from my mentor Kayla’s, because Katie worked in HR for R&D (research and development) as Kayla works for University Recruiting. The difference is that Katie manages the HR needs for a team of people, as Kayla recruit’s new employees. Katie talked to us about both the difficulties and the rewards HR as a job has, while also joking about her job relating it to Toby from “The Office.” It is interesting how Katie uses different ideas like mind-maps and Myers Briggs to bring her teams together. After meeting with Katie, we met with Kristen Stewart and she told us all about the intern programs. She mentioned how they try to plan things throughout the summer and work to get the interns involved. After this, we had lunch with Kayla, Kristen, and two NC State professors that teach about HR. It was very interesting to hear what they teach and how they approach teaching their classes. Both of the professors worked in the HR field prior to teaching. After lunch, we met with Danielle, who works in HR for diversity and inclusion. It was interesting to see how this was a rather new job (only 7 months old), and how once Danielle figured out what she liked, she made her job happen. Prior to her, there was no specific job at SAS as a diversity and inclusion employee. After this, we got to listen in on a meeting between Danielle, Kayla, and Kristen about how to manage diversity when recruiting different employees. This was all very interesting because it was a rather new topic in SAS, so they could make up what they wanted to do as they did it.
The first one and a half hours of this morning we finished up all three of our projects– what a relief! We then had four meetings that were relatively back-to-back. First on the schedule was Mr. Bachman and Ms. Cooke, both in the department of procurement. They brought us all kinds of assorted knick-knacks of yo-yos, journals, pens, and stress toys to first discuss all varieties of purchases they make for the company from tchotchkes to cars. They write hundreds of proposals to different organizations, and when chosen, they distribute funding and select which items to purchase. Next we met with former Cary Academy student Hannah Goetz, a Contraceptive Technology Innovation Department intern. She began her college years at Johns Hopkins and transferred to UNC, while discovering her love for public health. She is about to continue working for FHI in Washington DC! Next we met with Ms. Lawton about her work in Behavioral, Epidemiological, and Clinical Sciences with her last research project. She travelled along with a few other FHI employees to understand what aspects of contraception are most favorable along with new ideas altogether for contraception. For a fairly simple objective, it required lots of effort– they needed translators, photographers, interviewers, and more. FHI also teamed up with another company to take their research and to convert it into beautiful presentations and booklets. One particularly interesting booklet described new ideas women had for contraception as well as features that may or may not be preferable: can be purchased from a mobile cart vendor, can be worn like a bracelet, can have no side-effects, can be made purposefully with no previous stigma, etc. Finally we met with Ms. Groves about her work in the Regulatory Affairs Department.
A collage of some pages from the booklet.
Ms. Follet visited the plant today! While it ensured that Rick and I had a custom deck to walk her through (which we later sent to other department heads), it also put me on the clock. Ms. Follet walked along the factory floor today, seeing: mixing, forming, baking, packaging, and even a small chunk of the warehouse. I think she was thoroughly impressed by the scope of the operation (millions of food per month is daunting), and by the sheer amount of corporate policies when juxtaposed to other WEPs (many startups).
Needless to say, the truncated time trick worked: I finally fixed my VBA issue.
Gary consequently spent an hour tossing random data against my solution, even going so far as to delete the entries entirely… somehow, due to the magic of VBA that I don’t even understand, it worked with an unintended (yet PREFERRED) consequence.
Tomorrow, my last day at the plant, will be sad: I’ve come to love the job, with it fostering new interests and a new appreciation for data. While I’ve always enjoyed programming, data analytics, and industrial engineering, the business world provided me a new depth of understanding of their intermingling and the viability of my current trajectory. Leaving the finance department behind will be tough, though I’m confident in my mark remaining. Tomorrow will involve more VBA coding with a new task, as well as some new graphs to make and explain. Looking forward to another great day.