An Engineer for Athletes: My Internship at Under Armour

I’m an engineer. When I accepted an offer to intern at Under Armour this summer, I recognized that it was a different path from those of my peers but I was psyched about working for a company that inspires me and being in an industry that I’m genuinely interested in. There’s no denying Under Armour’s brand is incredible. What would I learn, and what it would teach me, is how to find my own brand.

It starts at our intern orientation, when Under Armour’s Senior Director of Global Football, Antonio Zea, talks to us about the power of “telling a story”. His example narrates the development of a new sample cleat: He’s in South America, watching kids run around the field in their newly-gifted prototypes. One kid points out that he’s afraid to see what it’s like to be stepped on while running, because the shoe material is so soft. Before Antonio has a chance to explain, another kid pipes up. He says, “Well, you’ll just have to be faster.”

Our ensuing speakers talk about how Under Armour knows and values the power of our own story, making it evident that this kid’s response is something that personifies our mindset. We discuss how Under Armour has spent our young history outrunning our competitors since our inception in our CEO Kevin Plank’s grandmother’s basement. We’ll find out that it’s also very apparent that the brand extends behind-the-scenes. All our teammates incorporate our underdog upbringing and roots in everything we do today.

With this in mind, I meet my team in Global Labeling & Packaging. I love everything so far, but I don’t understand how Under Armour’s story can be applied here or what can be told by labeling and packaging. Honestly, concentrating on the tedious processes they go through is draining some of my inspiration from the company. I have a flash of doubt: what am I doing here?

Gradually, I start meeting people in other departments, overhearing conversations in boxing class, and conversing with coworkers on the boat ride to work. With every story I hear encouraging a different perspective, I slowly stop picturing Under Armour as a black box of creativity and marketing and design. I begin thinking of it as, say, something I can relate to: a tech company. Tech not just in terms of the UA Connected Fitness platform, for example apps like My Fitness Pal, but in terms of the exceptional approach of the company itself- always looking for innovations, taking risks, doing the analysis: in an industry where traditionally the only innovations come from designers. Now it’s easy to see everything I haven’t considered — the unique opportunities for an industrial engineer’s optimization, the willingness to change, the drive to get things done.

I had learned the monotonous steps of pulling labeling & packaging data from a complicated system. Now, I have an idea to create a user-friendly database that my team can query and save hours of extraction. This makes me think of hours spent in the machine shop freshman year working on a process to design a tool that would protect wheelchair users from the rain. At each stage, we would think: how could we make this better? Does this achieve our goal? Under Armour is no stranger to this framework of taking processes and applying something new to it, whether it be incorporating data and analysis or focus groups or consumer insights.

As I work, I combine the power of Under Armour’s mentality with the newfound power of my own brand and background. I’m an engineer, one who recognizes the power of creativity and wants to use my technical background to innovatively identify and optimize processes that never have been created or transformed so much before. I’m no longer just writing code or creating graphs but understanding what impact it can make and how it ties back to Under Armour’s core mindset. By teaching me to think from a different perspective, for example that of a story, Under Armour has changed my perspective and enabled me to figure out who I am and what I want to do.

Sometimes as engineers we’re less likely to think in terms of stories. We’re taught to problem solve. Under Armour is a company that does both and taught me how to do so as well.

#UASummerLeague #BestInEveryGame

By Nisha Bhuva — UA 2017 Summer Rookie

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on August 25, 2017.

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