Georgetown MBA Internship Diary: Alexis

The International Side of Corporate Audit

As of this week, my Corporate Audit team is wrapping up the fieldwork phase of our audit and moving into reporting. The Lead Auditor and Manager on my project have been wonderful in letting me lead client interviews- both in person and over conference calls. In the last two weeks I have met with so many employees at Nike- and have taken part in meetings with Nike Greece, Nike Mexico, Nike Russia, and the European Headquarters- which is based in the Netherlands.

The international aspect of my job is one of the things I like most about Corporate Audit. Since we cover the audits across Nike, Inc., my team gets to know the processes and cultures of many of the international Nike offices, and those of the Nike Affiliates (Cole Haan, Converse, Nike Golf, and Umbro). Since I'm pursuing my International Business Diplomacy certificate at Georgetown's MBA program, I love the fact that I'm able to apply my learning about doing business abroad- to my every-day job.

On a side note, my husband visited me last weekend and got to witness first-hand how beautiful Portland is in the summer. Below are a few pictures of our trip to Mt.Hood.

 

LeBron and Trevor

Believe it or not, the questions I get asked most often about my Nike internship experience are not about Nike's culture nor about the 3-dimensional Nike corporate matrix. The two most common questions I get asked are 1) if I'll get to go to the summer Olympics and 2) if I've had any celebrity sightings. Unfortunately, I won't be heading off to Beijing any time soon, but I have had a few athlete sightings in the past five weeks.

My first week at Nike, Trevor Immelman, winner of the 08' Masters, made an appearance at our end-of-the-fiscal-year party. Then, last week, LeBron James, sporting a Roger Federer baseball cap, showed up on campus for a Beijing send-off party and played P.I.G. and Guitar Hero against some of the Nike employees (including an MBA intern).

It's occasions like the ones I mentioned above that make Nike an even-more fabulous place to work. As my husband recently put it after a visit to Portland and the Nike campus: "who wouldn't love seeing their heroes at work every day?"

CR-eate Competition

A few weeks ago, the Nike interns began a case-like competition to develop a CR (Corporate Responsibility) initiative. Ultimately, interested interns were divided up into four teams of approximately ten interns each, and given a chance to develop and then present a CR-related strategy to Nike Corporate Responsibility representatives at the end of the summer.

Each team is focusing on one of Nike's four CR platforms: Climate, Community, Compliance, or Considered. Although my original team chose Community, I eventually switched to another team that was developing a compliance initiative- which was much closer aligned with my interests in operations. Now, I have the chance to help develop a prototypical program that would make Nike's supply chain more sustainable by the year 2015, and then present that initiative to Nike management!

I am really excited to take part in this project and am certain that Georgetown's MBA curriculum has prepared me for success. Specifically, I plan to pull in my experience from two of my favorite 1st-year classes: Professor Soule's business ethics class- where my 5-person team and I reviewed Coca Cola Enterprise's CRS (corporate responsibility and sustainability) report and presented our suggested changes to executive management; and Professor Heino's communications class (which was essentially a public speaking class) where I learned to not only develop a strong power-point, but also to present it without feeling like my stomach is in my throat!

Teamwork Really is Key

I'm now in my fourth week of my internship. Hard to believe!

Since my last post, my corporate audit team has moved from the planning stage of our audit to actually executing the fieldwork. Now, we're meeting with the "clients" (Nike employees in various parts of the business) and gathering information about their processes. This stage is my favorite because I get to meet with people from all over the world and learn about the work they do for Nike.

Throughout both the planning and fieldwork stages of the audit, I have been amazed by the amount of teamwork that goes into everything I do. From brainstorming, to meeting with clients, to writing up workpapers- I have worked with my three other corporate audit teammates throughout every step of the audit process. In some work environments, an extremely-collaborative work system such as the one in Corporate Audit might prove challenging, but Nike (and, specifically, the Corporate Audit group) has done an extremely-good job of screening potential corporate auditors for not just their technical skills, but also for how they would fit in with the team. As a result, I feel like every day I go to work with people I would be friends with outside of Nike.

Lucky for me, I also have a lot of experience with teams after my first year at Georgetown's MBA program -where, over the course of the year, students work on class projects in a team of the same 5 people. Although I was spoiled with my Georgetown team (I had the best group ever- a guy from Korea, one from Mexico, one from Pennsylvania -who spoke Arabic!-, and another hilarious person from Texas), the experience taught me to work with people from unique work experiences, and to take advantage of hearing ideas and opinions that may be completely different from my own.

Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend of mine about the reason I chose Georgetown's MBA program, and about the fact that I passed up an opportunity to attend a higher-ranked school. In our conversation, he asked if I ever regretted my decision.I said no, and gave him the example I just spoke of; I am certain that Georgetown's team-centric and internationally-focused program has been pivotal in the success I've had in this role at Nike.