Winterns! Supporting WiTNY’s 2019 January Internship program at ActionIQ
As we at ActionIQ have been growing, we have been looking to increase our presence and support within the NYC tech community through a number of initiatives. We all benefit from creating a thriving tech community — arguably the best in the world — and to be honest, these initiatives are typically fun and an opportunity for us to learn a few new things too.
One of these initiatives has been to partner with CUNY and Cornell and WiTNY to support their “Winternship” program. In their words:
A Winternship is a paid, three-week mini-internship experience during the January academic recess. Winternships are curated uniquely by each company to give Winterns an immersive experience in their business/industry.
The driver for this program is that many students do not have the time or network to successfully get their foot on the career ladder. The stats before this program started are worrying:
WiTNY’s first two years of a summer internship program showed that only 3.6% of the CUNY women who apply for summer tech internships receive offers. Feedback from our partner companies suggested the low offer rates for CUNY candidates was due to lack of experience on their resumes to advance past the screening process and when interviewed, no work experiences that they can effectively talk about.
However the impact from this simple program is incredible:
The goal was to create an experience that would be ‘low risk and have a low barrier to entry’ for participating companies and yet give these young women the needed experience and a resume credential to make them more competitive when applying for full 10-week summer internships. 46 companies in the New York City area participated in 2018. Success was measured in terms of the percentage of the Winterns that were able to land a paid 10-week tech internship in the summer following their Winternship experience, whether at the Winternship company or not. The results were extraordinary: 54% of the Winterns landed paid tech summer internships, far exceeding the data we had seen in the past and exceeding the national average of about 25%.
In 2019, ActionIQ participated in the program and welcomed Anika Chowdhury, Bryanna Crayton, Hannah Santiago, Poonam Limbachia and Stella Chung to join us for 3 weeks. Most were freshman/sophomores and came to us with minimal hands-on experience (which we were expecting). To help them we setup a lightweight training and development program before getting them started on their internship project.
During the time with us they learned about what we do here at ActionIQ… what is an enterprise software company, startup life, marketing, data science, engineering, design, product development, sales, client support and the art of telling a story through data. The last part was phenomenal — using Python, Seaborn, Jupyter, and Tableau they analyzed some of our data and produced a report that provided insight and operational guidance highlighting opportunities to improve. On their penultimate day of the internship, they presented their work to the entire company.
From our perspective it was a total success. We learned a lot about how to coach raw talent, learned some things we didn’t know from their data presentation and also had a really fun time.
This success was driven by members of every team in the company contributing their time and help to the program. In particular, we have to call out Tim Murphy, one of our longest tenured Engineers who is a member of our Infrastructure team, and Kia Dalili our lead Data Scientist who gently guided the team to structure and deliver their project.
Please, please consider supporting this great program in January 2020 and if you have any questions about making it successful then do feel free to reach out to me.
Below, in their words, you’ll hear what they thought of the experience…
Anika Chowdhury
What Brought Me Here? Finding internships so young in my college career is impossible, until I found out about WiTNY. ActionIQ contacted WiTNY to be part of the Winternship program for the first time this year and luckily me along with 4 other young women were matched with the criteria of the company.
What was I expecting out of this? I did research when getting matched with the company and found out it was a startup tech company. I had little to no knowledge of what a startup company is and how it functioned. But, I love trying new things and learning. Experience is always good for everyone, especially for someone who doesn’t know what to do with her major or where to go after college. I did have past experience working at a tech company but didn’t know what to expect at a startup company. So I walked in with hope to learn something new.
What did I actually get out of this? Let me just start off by saying, ActionIQ opened my eyes to different thoughts of what a startup company is. The people at ActionIQ took their time out of their busy schedules and gave us an idea of what they do and how they contribute to the company. Meeting with everyone gave me a sense of what they do. Who knew a tech company needed a sales team, because I didn’t!
With the Winternship, we were assigned to do a project. All I can say is that when we were assigned the given data visualizations, I had no idea on how it would look like or how we would go upon it. It felt like so much to do with such little time. Just confused. But our managers, Tim and Kia, thankfully condensed it down to a point where we all understood what on Earth we were doing. At the end of the day, our data visualizations/presentation was very well received.
Over the past 3 weeks I have developed professional relationships with people at the office which will come in handy in the near future. The environment of the office and kindness of the people was just absolutely family like. We ended off our internship with a successful paint night hosted by Laura, who is a member of the field engineering team.
What is next? Hopefully having ActionIQ on my resume will open connections to being hired during the summer or maybe another winternship. This also helps my resume look professional for someone so young in their college career.
Bryanna Crayton
What brought me here? What first brought me into WiTNY, was their Summer Guild program — a week of learning about coding, design, prototyping, and developing an app. During this summer program, we were also taught about the Winternship and how it would be a great opportunity for us to experience hands-on learning at a company in the tech field. Through WiTNY, I was able to experience what different parts of the tech world could be like and especially with this internship, I was able to actually get a feel for what working at a tech startup is like.
What was I expecting to get out of it? For the actual environment of the office and the people, I expected a very stiff and almost boring environment and the inability to talk to the other employees during the work day. In terms of the actual work that we were given, I expected something challenging and interesting and something what I would find really cool. I also expected that I would be able to come out of this experience completely sure of what I wanted to do in the future/for the rest of college.
What did I actually get out of it? Looking back on the past 3 weeks, I have a better understanding of what different fields are out there, within the tech industry and outside of it. I don’t know exactly what I want to do, but through this internship experience, I have found that there are a lot of paths that I can try to learn more about and gain experience in that I may want to pursue in the future. As for the environment and the project work, the project was just as interesting and challenging as I expected it to be because it allowed us to use our prior knowledge and mix it together with our new-found knowledge about ActionIQ and what this company does. The environment was beyond my expectations, in that I was pleasantly surprised to find out this was a startup company and the people were very welcoming to us working in the same space as them.
What did I learn? I learned a lot about teamwork and that it can be difficult at times when we bump heads or have different opinions on the way things should’ve been during the project. Specifically, I learned even more so that it is important to know that everyone has a voice and is an important part of the group. I also learned that it is okay not to have a set plan as to what I would want to do in the future or even what I want to study in college. Something very valuable that I also learned was that I shouldn’t set limits for myself based on what I’m studying and how that can carry out to what I may do after I graduate.
What were the positive or negative surprises? There were so many positives about this internship that I didn’t expect and were really great in the end. For example, I think that one of the great surprises was the overall environment of ActionIQ because I didn’t expect a super enthusiastic and welcoming workplace and we got both of those things and more. It is hard to pinpoint anything negative about the experience because everything was well organized, while also not being too in our face about getting work done.
What’s next? What I think is next for me is to apply for a summer internship, hopefully at ActionIQ, but also just in general because I would like to have more experiences like this one and hopefully find a field of computer science that I really enjoy and find very interesting.
Hannah Santiago
What brought me here? This opportunity to intern at ActionIQ was possible because of an organization called WiTNY (Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship in New York). I applied for a Winternship opportunity through WiTNY and was company matched by them, bringing me to ActionIQ.
What was I expecting to get out of it? Prior to my first day at ActionIQ I didn’t really know what to expect. Of course WiTNY had prepared us on important skills such as professionalism and teamwork, but the actual Winternship day-to-day work varied from company to company. One important thing I did expect to get out of this internship was to see if I could actually foresee myself in a career in tech. I was also excited to see the company culture of a startup and just to learn more about the ActionIQ platform and what they do. I have minimal engineering and computer science experience, which I hoped to learn on the job here, but also hoped my lack of ability to code wouldn’t hinder my ability to perform well in this internship.
What did I actually get out of it? While I think that this internship did touch all the aspects I hoped to learn, it went above and beyond what I could have expected. I was able to get a good intro on Python, which was easy enough to learn to the extent that we used it in our project. One thing that I was surprised by was how much I enjoyed the engineering portion of our project. Our project had three main aspects: engineering, design, and marketing. I had anticipated to participate more on the marketing and design aspects of the project and leave the engineering and coding to those more experienced than I. However, it worked out that everyone in our group of interns ended up contributing to every aspect of the project, which thankfully exposed me to things outside of my comfort zone. I found coding very satisfying in that after attempt after attempt there was a tangible outcome that you could be proud of. Of the things which I expected to get out of it, such as gauging the tech industry for a potential career and learning more about startups, were also things I thankfully got out of the experience here at ActionIQ. Being able to talk to so many people in different fields exposed me to potential things I could (or could not) see myself doing. I learned so much about what ActionIQ does, their industry, and about startup culture in general.
What were the positive or negative surprises? I would say a positive surprise was how much responsibility the company entrusted into a bunch of college interns. We were handed data and the outcome of our project was expected to be something ActionIQ could use. While I was impressed by this and happy to take on such a challenge I was a little nervous at producing something useful, since I felt like we were so inexperienced. However, another positive surprise, was that people from every part of the company were happy to talk to us, help us in our project, and answer any questions we might have had.
The only negative I experienced during my time here was that it was simply too short!
Whats next? As to what’s next I would say that I would love to experience the other side of this industry. ActionIQ is on one side, helping marketers utilize their consumer data. I would love to work and intern on the side of the marketers using software like ActionIQ’s and see what that is like to compare the two. I think that working at ActionIQ has really opened some doors for me in this industry and I am eager to explore more.
Poonam Limbachia
How did I get here? I came to Action IQ through WiTNY- WiTNY is a women empowerment program which connects women from a different background from CUNY colleges and gives them the opportunity to learn real-world challenges and experience from tech companies.
What did I get out of this? I learned the insights of this company. I learned how there are different paths within the tech industry. How different fields connect with each other. How one software can connect many customers and help the retails and companies with their growth.
What team did you join and what did you work on first? We joined the data scientist team. Data scientist works with the customer data and helps other companies to analyze their revenue, drop downs, and key points. We worked on a data set to do data visualization. At first, data was messy and did not make any sense so our first task was to clean up the data and then start the analyzing. The tools that we used were Python, Seaborn, Jupyter, and tableau. After the clean up it helped us to analyze it and make the visualizations.
What did I learn? At first, I did not know any coding as I have never worked with Python. So my first step was to learn the basics of Python on code academy. After that, there was a lot of googling and asking questions to get us started. Team working was a key. Putting our ideas together and collaborating with each other really got the work done.
Stella Chung
What brought me here? The Winternship program is a special opportunity for female City University of New York (CUNY) students to intern with a tech company for three weeks and learn more about the industry, network with professionals, and get a foot in the door for future jobs. During the application process, I answered questions about my experience and preferences. I specifically noted that I preferred to work in a smaller company and was interested in data analytics. Based on my answers, I was matched with ActionIQ, an enterprise CDP empowering marketers with the power of data, and I was extremely fortunate to have been chosen.
What was I expecting to get out of it? After finding about my match with ActionIQ, I immediately began to do research on the company. Initially, it was daunting. I was not familiar with the industry nor the product they sold and reading about it only confused me more. Although I was a bit nervous, I was also really excited to work at a startup. I was hoping to get involved with real work and actually have an impact after the three weeks were over. Being with a smaller company, I wanted to create closer bonds with people and hopefully make some long-lasting relationships. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect in terms of what I would actually be working on, but I was hoping to learn some coding and data analytic tools.
What did I actually get out of it?/What did I learn? The experience was nothing I could have expected, yet everything I wanted it to be within the short three week period. Our project combined aspects of design, engineering, and marketing. I learned how to clean data with Python, how to make data visualizations on Tableau and Seaborn, and how to interpret analysis into strategic marketing actions.
Having lunches and talks with multiple employees, I got insight on all kinds of different professions, such as infrastructure engineering, product management, forward-deployed engineering, enterprise sales, data science, and more. Initially, the project seemed intimidating. We were given a data set and asked to find interesting insight. There was no step-by-step guideline. However, this taught me invaluable skills, like how to manage a project in a certain amount of time, how to work in a team of widely-skilled individuals, and the importance of taking initiative.
What were the positive and/or negative surprises? I wasn’t sure how much trust we’d be given as college interns for three weeks. To my surprise, ActionIQ was very transparent with us. They entrusted us with information about the company and their projects, making the experience fully immersive and authentic. Despite being here for only three weeks, I feel like I have a solid grasp on the company culture, work ethic, and values. It felt like being part of a big family filled with innovative and like-minded individuals driven by ambition and success. I am extremely grateful to have been matched with ActionIQ, as I don’t know if I would’ve had the same experience and openness at other, larger companies.
Whats next? Moving forward, this experience has equipped me with so many skills that can propel me to new heights. Part of the Winternship goal is to come out of the program and actually use the experience as a launching point to land a summer internship at a tech company. This experience has definitely given me an edge in comparison to other applicants. I’m confident in the skills I’ve learned and the connections I’ve made. It has definitely opened the door for me in terms of different paths I can take.
I hope to stay in touch with the people I’ve met and continue to pave my career path in tech. In the future, maybe I’ll be back at ActionIQ or at least I’ll be visiting as often as I can. I have big dreams for the future, and I hope that I, as well as the females in my group, can eventually work to close the gender gap in the tech industry.
Steve leads Engineering at ActionIQ and loves building excellent enterprise software products and excellent engineering teams. He’s been doing this a while across a number of different industries and has built software from the “good old days” of building websites in perl and writing business logic in stored procedures to large distributed data-driven systems, mobile and desktop apps and reporting tools.
Outside of the office, he spends most of his time with his wife, 3 daughters and two cats in Brooklyn and a little time riding motorcycles or making music.
