James Payne

College: Hunter College

Education Level: Bachelor's Degree

Career Interest: Finance, Psychology

I graduated from Hunter College with my bachelors in psychology and want to make a transition into the financial industry with the long term goal being to becoming a fund manager and a philanthropist to create and fund financial literacy programs in the neighborhood in which I grew up.

What was your role?

Gather funding materials and information for potential funding sources and what was needed to apply for them.

What did you work on?

What was the impact of your project?

The potential impact of my project is that Unadat can use the information to apply for funding and use the funding to expand the company. As a new company there is need for lots of funding for the different aspects of the company and with the information I gathered Unadat can appropriately decide which aspects of the program the funding can apply to.

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

I`ve learned how to be a better team player. During the internship when I watched the collaborate and work on projects one of the things I noticed was that everyone contributed in a way that was not competitive but cooperative. People created a way for everyone to collaborate on a project where different team mates were able to pick up where another team member was having trouble.

What skills have you gained?

I`ve developed my research skills. During this internship the research i did i had to be resourceful because most of the information that I needed was behind a paywall or the information was not readily available so I had to reverse engineer search results and develop tactics for getting the information behind the paywalls and validate the accuracy of the information.

What was the biggest roadblock you've overcome?

My biggest road block was getting information from websites that required a subscription service in order to be able to access the information I needed at the time. During my search much of the websites I visited required that I paid a fee or subscribe with monthly recurring payments of hundreds of dollars but the information they had was often false or was often not reliable and in order for me to get to this conclusion I had to use the information they gave me during trial periods to find the information on a particular grant on google. An example of this was a website that listed grants required a subscription in order to find the requirements of a grant they posted on their website but I had a name an description of the grant so I had to use that information to find the requirements on my own.

How has company culture guided your work?

The company has a self driven environment when it comes to the work it does. There is no hand holding and with this there is room for creative problem solving solution. When faced with a problem you are not going to find a solution immediately but you can ask your team for a way of thinking about the problem in order to find a solution and often times the solution is not going to be derived by thinking about the problem linearly so you have to try creative problem solving to find the solutions.

What was your experience at Unadat?

My experience at Unadat was very intriguing because I never had experience working on the frontlines of a technology start up and it is going to shape my expectations for future endeavors. The team I worked with was very fascinating to watch because they were in constant communication with each other to make sure that each aspect of the projects they were working on went as planned and during this time whenever there was a team member who was facing an obstacle or roadblock the team addressed it as necessary to limit hindrance of project completion. Whenever I needed a solution to anything I could reach out to Sean immediately and he would have a quick meeting with me to brainstorm potential solutions to the problem.

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

The big project I had was gathering a listing of potential funding sources for the company. The list had to be as detailed as possible so that when applying for the grants and loans for the company. For most of the loans and grants I had to search through google but the sites and suggestions I got from google were inaccessible because the sites wanted me to subscribe but the names and brief descriptions were available so I used the names and description of each grant to find the direct source of the grant.

What advice would you give to future interns?

My advice to the next group of incoming interns would be to come into this internship with what you want to leave with whether is increasing the amount of people within your network or gaining experience for your resume and tailor this idea with your internship experience. If you as an intern understand why you are doing this internship you will get the most value from it.