Reflections on my Summer

Looking back at my summer at Arabella Advisors, I remember at the beginning of the summer I had several goals of what I hoped to achieve.  First, I wanted to work in an environment where I could strengthen either my strategy or financial analysis skills.  I felt that, in order to complement my dual degree MBA/MPA, a successful internship would have to hit at least one of those buckets.  Second, I was set on ensuring the internship would provide me exposure to the social impact and/or philanthropy space.  When I decided to pursue the dual degree, it was always a priority to spend one summer focused on my MBA and another focused on my MPA.  Having spent last summer in investment banking, I committed myself to focusing this summer on the MPA and the social impact space. Lastly, I wanted to be in an environment where I could work independently.  My previous roles (GLG, Goldman Sachs) were in large, structured environments.  While I had isolated opportunities to work independently, I felt I could improve my ability to work in a more ambiguous environment where I could manage my own workflows, and while working with people across the firm, I would own each relationship independently.

This internship allowed me to achieve each of these goals, as well as several others.   I found the experience to be both fulfilling and rewarding.

Strategy Skills: This role provided me the opportunity to hone my strategic analysis, data visualization and PowerPoint skills.  I worked closely with senior leadership to turn data into visual messages to relay to broader teams within the firm.  I also was able to think strategically to help the team problem solve where appropriate. While this was clearly a strategy role, I appreciated that there were also opportunities to work with data and in Excel, in more of financial strategy type of role.  Lastly, I was able to present my findings to senior team members (the CEO and COO, amongst others) who valued my input and perspective based on my findings.

Philanthropy Experience: While much of my experience to date in social impact has been in the healthcare and impact investing markets, I was able to learn more about the philanthropy market, which is peripherally related to both.  Philanthropy is an area I had some prior experience in but not much recent relevant experience in.  I feel I almost got a “crash course” in this space.  I enjoyed having the opportunity to gain exposure to a new market, learn about fiscal sponsorship and understand Arabella’s clients.  I appreciated learning more about the philanthropy and non-profit sectors this summer and feel it helped to hone my understanding of the social impact market.   

Working Independently:I feel I improved my ability to work with ambiguity, build my independence and be a self-starter.  While Arabella is a structured environment, I was always aware that the structure of this role would be more fluid than my previous roles.  Given that much of the team I worked with was located in DC, Chicago or LA, I knew that I would have to be independent in New York.  I also realized that, while I reported up to the COO, I was able to work with people across various lines of business, and it was be my responsibility to manage those relationships. I appreciated the trust the team had in me to work independently and manage various relationships, and feel I developed this skill significantly over the course of the summer.

– Sophia Valner, MBA/MPA 2020

Finishing Strong at CSP

My summer at Cause Strategy Partners flew by. As we approached August, I could not believe that I had limited time left in my capacity at CSP. My internship ended in some incredible wins for myself and the team. 

The leadership team was really impressed with the final product from my employee engagement and organizational culture surveys. I spent time carefully analyzing the results from both of these surveys and creating a slide deck that I presented to the team. This included the results of the employee engagement survey and a cultural profile based on the results from the CSP community. 

I worked with the other graduate intern to analyze and create a presentation from the results of the program evaluation as well as a dashboard tool in Excel to easily track those results over time for the two client constituencies. In this project I was able to really stretch and gain some experience teaching others how to use tools that I had become familiar with in my former positions and in my first year at Stern. We presented the findings to the whole team and we received incredibly positive feedback on how they might use the data in their own work. 

The end of the summer ended with a huge win for the CSP team: they had successfully matched 500 board members to 200 nonprofit boards since their first round of matching in 2016. The team conspired to surprise the CEO with a huge celebration with balloons, cupcakes and confetti. All of which was documented and immediately put on the CSP Twitter to celebrate. This not only was a fun way to start my last week, but it helped me further understand the possible impact that CSP could have in the coming years. As they move to new cities and engage more nonprofits, I am so excited to see the footprint they leave on the nonprofit community through high impact board members.

500 BoardLeaders Celebration: Me & Savannah