My experience at StartUP FIU

Capstone: StartUP FIU Internship

During summer 2016, I was one of the first five members to join the StartUP FIU team. Together, we developed the structure for bi-weekly events and a 14-week accelerator program, as well as launched all communications channels. During this period, I oversaw the summer student volunteer group, while working towards understanding how to collaborate with an organization like FIU that serves more than 50,000 students.

One of my greatest accomplishments while in this organization was to receive and process over 300 applications for the program’s first two cohorts. Moreover, I served as a liaison to the student community with the objective of understanding how we could best serve them, connecting them with resources inside and outside of the university, and identifying talent to join our team.

I enjoyed meeting with students in a daily basis; this is probably one of my favorite parts of my jobs. After visiting classes and blowing everyone up with futuristic notions and ideas on how to prepare ourselves for the future, a lot of students approached me to ask questions and schedule follow up meetings. They shared with me their ideas, dreams and concerns, and I shared with them my experience and articles with great information. After asking questions to understand their thinking, I made recommendations. Everyone was happy. Everyone left with next steps, and that made me happy.

Overall, building the program and building relationships through this year helped me to understand that I am more capable of accomplishing goals than I have ever imagined. Also, working for a cause that is so important and seeing the impact of our work made me change the way I look at jobs. Now, I am more conscious of who I work with and why I pick the projects where I invest my time in.