Every week we interns are given a quota of work that Ellery uses in its day-to-day practice. Coming into the internship, I assumed that I would only get out of it another experience to write about and a bit more knowledge about private equity, but I quickly learned that it is much more than that. Being an intern has been equal parts working and being enriched by Jalen, Orlando, and Beth. 

During our onboarding week, Jalen made a point to teach us the reasoning behind the work we’d do as interns rather than getting us completely ramped up to our normal output. Being a freshman, I hadn’t heard of most of the technical pieces of private equity, but Jalen’s insistence on everyone asking questions quickly got me up to speed. The education did not stop there. 

For the first half of the spring, Orlando hosted weekly optional finance sessions in which he taught finance both theoretically and practically. Again, this was years beyond me in school, and I learned more than I could have imagined. While the sessions focused loosely on private equity, I was still able to ask any questions I had about stocks or investment banking as they came to mind. In the latter half, Beth has been using this time slot to teach us financial modeling and the theory behind each value in the models. It’s fantastic to have the chance to create a model and receive feedback on it from someone experienced in finance. I appreciate most that these sessions aren’t necessary for our work at Ellery and serve only as enrichment for us. 

Being an intern at Ellery, I can say that I’ve gotten out just as much as I’ve put in; I’m very happy to have met Jalen, Orlando, and Beth and know they’ll be great and willing resources even after my time with the company ends.