Internship Description
Azul Modak ’20 interned with the Center for Global Health and Development, a global health nonprofit that brings together diverse public and private sector stakeholders through their publications, projects, and roundtable forums. Azul worked to develop a sustainable and scalable insurance platform for disadvantaged and marginalized communities in emerging economies, customizable by region. Responsibilities included conducting extensive primary research to understand the ecosystem of potential partner countries, identifying partners and forging relationships with potential stakeholders in the health care sector, targeting potential investors/donors for seed capital, and creating a pitch deck to help raise funds.
I was helping the center to understand how to create a sustainable affordable health care platform. My contribution was by doing research on the countries they could enter, the problems that were faced there, finding institutions that were already working on the region, possible partnerships, and giving ideas of how to connect all these participants to enter the ecosystem.
I used different skillsets for this job. First, there was no clear management team or expectations, so I needed to frame and align the expectations of the work and goals they wanted to achieve. For that I used people management skills learned in the Leader’s Voice and Negotiations classes. Second, I was developing strategies that involved revenue generation. For this I used several classes on corporate finance to explain models such as Paypal, where by investing the money overnight and keeping the interest you can offer free services.Also strategy classes helped me understand the market and participants to incorporate in the model for customer acquisition and partnerships. Classes such as Global Immersion Program were useful to understand how other societies work, specifically since I was developing a cancer treatment platform partnership in Africa, for which my learning in the GIP Africa class was essential.
My biggest challenge was a cultural one. Being a foreigner working in an environment with locals gives you a big disadvantage in terms of communications and interests. I realized that the way I see the world and I understand business is completely different. Communicating my ideas and phrasing them in a way that my coworkers could understand was complicated, specially during stressful situations. I also realized that understanding what they were expecting was challenging. Thinking in a different language implies structuring your thoughts differently, and I realized that I needed to change this and adapt to the new work environment.
I loved my experience, and I hope to be able to continue working with them on the future, not necessarily as my primary job, but as a side/hobby one. I would have loved having the opportunity to travel around the world with them. I got the opportunity to work on projects in the UK, multiple countries, and Pakistan. I realized that working in a place that is created to generate ideas is fascinating. It gave me the opportunity to see how institutions around the world are interested in creating something to improve peoples lives.