This semester I will be doing my internship at an analytics company named, education Leadership and analytics (eLa). This company has a variety of clients across the 3 sectors (business, government, and nonprofit) and provides their expertise to empower their clients to make the correct business decisions. The reason the L in leadership is capitalized is because this company understands that without the proper leadership the education and analytics pieces fall apart and are unable to really affect the change the community needs. The reason I chose this internship over other opportunities is because I believe in the way this company views themselves, not only as a for profit entity but as a launch pad for change and progress in the community. I believe that in order for us to become the leaders our communities need we need to be educated and well informed, be willing to be a capital L Leaders by taking risks and having the interest of others at heart, but also we need to have the facts on our side and that is where the analytics piece comes in. With analytics you get numbers, and even though people can add whatever interpretation they want to those numbers at the end of the day those numbers will still be the same. That being said, I am not a numbers person and have very little experience in analytics, however I consider myself a community leader and understand that having the numbers to back my statements and positions will make me a better Leader. As far as this internship goes my three goals for this semester are as follow:
- To better understand how and where the three sectors interact and in what areas can they learn from each other or collaborate.
- To gain a greater understanding of the analytics process and determine how analytics can be beneficial to each of the sectors.
- To get hands on experience and thus a better understanding of the private sector, since most of my career experience has been spent on the nonprofit and government sectors.