Through the desert for the ideal tech internship

Angela Lu, MBA 2019, is president of the Graduate Business Student Association and collaborated with Naveh Malihi, MBA 2019, on this blog post.

We’re almost back in classes, those of us who are called second-year MBA students. The first year’s certainly flown by! There’s still time for a fourth entry in our summer series though! I asked Naveh Malihi to recount his entire internship journey and share a bit about what motivated him to earn an MBA. Naveh, who calls Israel home, found himself in Idaho this summer.

Class of 2019: Summer Catch-up Series No. 4

[incoming call, unrecognized number]

“Hi, am I speaking with Naveh?”

“Hi, yes.”

“Great, my name is Jordan, I’m from HR in Micron Technology. I wanted to tell you we decided to extend you an offer for a summer intern product manager in our headquarters in Boise, Idaho.”

Product management? In tech? Hell yeah, that’s exactly what I want to do – possibly the main reason I went to get an MBA. I also remember interviewing for Micron and I felt “the click” with my potential boss.

“Hi, Jordan, sounds great! Could you please email me the offer then?”

“Sure.”

The second I hung up, I googled “Boise, Idaho.” You might say I should’ve done this before, but I interviewed like crazy during recruiting season. As far as my internship was concerned, the role was way more important than the location.

A couple of weeks later, my partner and I started our 32-hour drive to Boise. We drove 13 hours on the first day to get to Denver. The NBA finals were on, so we went to watch the game at a local sports bar. The next day, we drove through beautiful Colorado and Utah, stopping at Arches National Park and for the night at Salt Lake City.

The next day, it was time. After around five hours in a complete desert, we arrived in Boise. Downtown looked amazing and vibrant. After a couple of beers, we called it a night and started our summer in Boise.

After going through the desert

The internship experience in Micron was outstanding. The project I led was approved through a feasibility study and hopefully will generate revenue for Micron soon.  The opportunity I got was incredible. My supervisors were super supportive along the way. They let me think big and creatively, but also let me deal with all the obstacles and challenges that inevitably arise when trying to drive big initiatives.

One of the main reasons I am pursuing an MBA is to move to the business side of tech and lead complex cross-functional processes. Knowing my desire and excitement about technology, I knew I couldn’t stay too far from the bits and bytes.

The product management role is exactly that. I was required to develop a deep understanding of the technologies I was working on within a very short time, and then collaborate with cross-functional team members to execute initiatives we believe are critical for the current semi-conductor market. Project management is a lot of communication, a lot of selling, and tons of learning as you go.

I also had the opportunity to meet many fellow interns and hike throughout the summer. I’m into the outdoors big time and Idaho is among the most beautiful states I have traveled to.

Now it’s definitely time to go back to school and finish up this MBA. Yo, Olin 2019, here I come!