Boy – four weeks flew by just like that. I wanted to take some time to discuss two areas where this internship has been such a success and where I have seen growth in myself. We have all been exposed to the ideas of accountability and competition at some point, but maybe not together like this. Jalen and Orlando have incorporated each of these into our experience, which has resulted in both personal and professional development for the entire class of interns.

Being a startup, interns play a vital role with real responsibility. Because of this, accountability is so important. Each week, we are expected to achieve certain KPI’s of progress regarding company sourcing, industry analysis, company reviews, and outreach efforts, among other tasks. We discuss our progress during daily scrum meetings and have an intern teammate (shoutout team EBITDAC) with a mutual expectation of having each other’s back. We have weekly checkups with Jalen and Orlando where we discuss what we have done/learned and what we would like to learn more about/see improvements in. The open discussion regarding our progress and challenges has facilitated an extremely collaborative culture of accountability – we make sure what needs to get done gets done.

When people think of competition, especially in a corporate sense, the first thing that probably comes to mind is coworkers trying to pull each other down to make it to the “top”, whatever that means. Here at Ellery, the competition between teams is effectively used to motivate everyone to put forth their absolute best, no matter the subject. This competition results in a win-win-win situation: we improve ourselves, our colleagues, and Ellery. Furthermore, as much as we personally want to succeed, we love seeing that hard work somebody else put in pay off.

Putting these two ideas together, we get an experience full of growth and development. We get a culture of helping others succeed and putting forth maximum effort. We get the dynamic environment that is Ellery Partners.