Jesse Shi

College: Macaulay Honors College at Baruch

Education Level: Rising Senior

Career Interest: Data Analytics

My name is Jesse Shi and I am currently a rising senior at Macaulay Honors College at Baruch. I am majoring in Computer Information Systems with a concentration in data analytics and minoring in math. Over my years in college, I have been able to gain experience in many different industries, including financial services, media, and tech. While I was born in New York City, I lived in China for the first 6 years of my life before moving back to the city, so you can say I have had the opportunity to experience significant parts of both Eastern and Western cultures. If there is one thing everyone who knows me would know about, it`s that I love food, and I would travel far for food. Living in New York City all these years, I was able to expose myself to food from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

What was your role?

Implementation of financial wellness score

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

Hopefully we can encourage more people to take financial wellness tests, especially if they`re concerned with their financial securities, so they can see which areas they need to improve and be able to create goals based on the results of the tests. While wellness tests aren`t as used and normalized as other scores, take credit score as an example, it`s still an efficient and fast metric to see where they`re at in terms of financial health.

What did you learn or improve on from this internship or from your teammates?

My teammates were my main resources for this internship, so naturally most of what I learned came from them. We had a variety of backgrounds and took some different courses in school, which made everyone an asset to the team. The CS team gave an overview of how the entire process would look, the UX|UI team selected designs with reasoning to support the decisions, and the quants webscraped and cleaned all the data we needed.

What skills have you gained?

As the product manager, a big part of this internship was learning how to leverage my leadership skills. Learning how to use Jira played an essential part in this, as it helped build the base for our plans over the last few weeks. It was also imperative for me to understand each person`s strengths/weaknesses as soon as possible and be able to allocate tasks based on them.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

I don`t recall the team encountering any significant roadblocks per se, but personally, my biggest roadblock was taking into everyone`s suggestions and trying to draw out the backbone of our project for the summer. As I wasn`t familiar with how the whole web development process works, I had to consult those who do and try to digest the information I received.

How has company culture guided your work?

Since the internship is remote, and the company culture is more on the free, independent side, I had to make sure to keep in touch with my teammates so everyone is up to date and doesn`t feel lost. Without proper communication, I`m sure most of us would be lost because our different backgrounds help us fill the knowledge gaps we had.

What was your experience at Unadat?

My experience at Unadat is very different compared to my previous internship experiences, but nonetheless, one that is intriguing and rewarding.

What was one big project you worked on during the internship? Can you walk me through the process?

Majority of the internship was spent on implementing the financial wellness score on the Unadat website. We started off with researching the different wellness scores that are publicly available and deciding on which one we wanted to base ours after. Then we drew designs for the webpages, using both inspirations from other apps and creativity, and wrote content (FAQ page) that could potentially be included on the website. The final part is figuring out the sitemap and the actual implementation of the webpages.

What advice would you give to future interns?

Everyone should walk into an internship with a VERY open mind and be ready to digest any information thrown at you. Every internship will most likely have a different environment and culture, and it`s best to be able to adapt to the differences as soon as possible. At Unadat, be ready to get the creative juices flowing and be self-disciplined to work independently.