Intern Spotlight: Alex Reynolds

By Alex Reynolds, FCRH 2014

Throughout this spring, I have had the pleasure of interning at Uncharted Play Incorporated, a very cool new start-up.  The company, founded in 2011 by two Harvard graduates, is a new kind of social enterprise that aims to show the world that doing good and doing good business need not be mutually exclusive.  The company’s flagship product is the SOCCKET, an energy harnessing soccer ball, which takes kinetic energy from play and stores it as electrical energy that can be later used as an off-grid light source.  This great idea has been piloted in several communities around the world, in places like South Africa, Haiti, and Mexico.  In addition to this flagship product, the company is in the process of creating a bunch of great new energy harnessing products in line with their mission of “Combining play with cutting edge technology to make the world a better place.”

My role for the company has been as a Business Development Intern.  I found the role on CareerLink and applied.  After two interviews, I received the job.  In this position I have done a series of tasks.  I work closely with both our Vice President of Business Development and our VP of Operations.  I perform a lot of social media initiatives, work closely to keep up with media outlets such as blogs for press coverage, and work to keep fans and potential partners happy through responding to emails.  In addition to smaller tasks, I also worked collaboratively to successfully run a Kickstarter campaign for the firm.  Kickstarter is a great website which aims to help “crowdfund” great ideas.   

People support projects and in return get rewards (in our case “backers” got a ball).  Our month-long project raised over 90,000 dollars which we are going to use to expand our production facilities to more efficiently make the product.

Ultimately, this internship experience certainly was excellent.  While there were certainly negative aspects, such as only working two days which makes it somewhat hard to work when things are constantly changing, I think that overall I got so much out of the experience.  First, I gained some work experience that I can utilize to build upon my previous academic successes.  Secondly, I saw a lot of the transferable skills that I have taken from my core curriculum put to excellent use.  Traits like multi-tasking, attention to detail, and positivity are all things that can be taken from our excellent Jesuit education, and they are extremely useful to utilize in any workplace environment.  Lastly, I have found that working in a unique situation (a social enterprise start-up) has a lot of value in that; 1) several people have found it intriguing which makes for an excellent selling point to employers and 2) its applicability to other work environments which might not be as difficult.  Taking this experience with me will hopefully help in my future career endeavors.

Overall, upon reflecting on my few months at my first ever internship, I think there are several things to take away.  First lesson is asking questions.  Whether it’s a summer internship that is full time or one like mine that occurred only on Mondays and Thursdays, asking questions and putting in effort to learn the company helps acclimatize yourself to the workplace quicker, which can make a world of a difference in terms of making it a great experience as well as differentiating yourself from your peers.  Another lesson I discovered was to always stay positive.  Almost unanimously, employers say positivity is the number one mindset they are looking for in a candidate for hire.  I think that this is especially important, if you’re doing a menial task, having a long day, or just have a lot on your plate, continuing with a positive attitude is the only way to make the experience positive.  Lastly, constantly be utilizing your experience to better yourself.  Whether or not your experience is good is up to you.  A boring or tedious internship can be made into a good one by being professional, developing connections, or even just taking on more work.  I think by utilizing these three lessons, you can really get a lot out of your internship experience.

I will miss working at Uncharted Play, but will continue to follow them and will always feel like part of the family here as a result of my great four months as part of the team!