Elliott BaerJournal #1
This summer, I am serving as a Special Advisor Intern in the Internal Advisory Group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The main mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorism and foreign intelligence threats, upholding and enforcing the criminal laws of the United States while providing leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I arrived at the J. Edgar Hoover building on a Monday morning. The impressive building seems to be warding off visitors of all sorts, but when you enter it feels familiar.
After a couple of days of orientation about what it means to be a part of the Bureau, we were ready to start on our summer projects. Eight interns from top business schools were charged with the task of helping to make organizational improvements for the FBI. The prospect of improving the greatest law enforcement agency in the world; a 32,000 person, 101-year old institution, was a daunting one, but we were encouraged that the Bureau could benefit from the fresh perspective of young and capable business school students.
My project involves making recommendations about how best to allocate FBI resources to equip the organization to fulfill its mission of protecting and defending the United States. In addition, the goal will be to make our recommendation sustainable so that the resource decision making process will make a difference well beyond our 10 weeks here in DC.
Journal #2
I have completed the first half of the Special Advisor internship at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As planned, my partner and I presented our latest findings to the Associate Deputy Director, along with several of the other Bureau executives this week. The meeting was a success, and the executives had excellent questions and suggestions for further research. It is truly remarkable that we, as interns, are having the opportunity to work on a high priority project with the Bureau’s most senior executives after only five weeks at the organization. With five weeks left to go, there is still time to incorporate their suggestions and pursue other areas in advance of our final presentation next month.
Since the scope of our project involves resource allocation across the country, it is a very large undertaking that will undoubtedly take months to complete. For that reason, we are doing our best to ensure that our work is sustainable. We are documenting every aspect of the project, as well as being very explicit about our model in order to make sure that future people working on it will be able to carry it through.
We also had the chance this week to visit Quantico, the site of the FBI Academy, as well as labs and research facility. The Academy is where all new Special Agents undergo several months of training before heading out into the field for the first time. The work and research that is being done at Quantico is truly cutting edge, and all of the interns really enjoyed the chance to see it all first-hand.
In a couple of weeks, the Special Advisor interns will meet for an MBA case discussion with an executive about the future of the FBI.
Journal #3
My internship has gotten more exciting every week. This week, we delivered our final presentation to the Associate Deputy Director, who is the COO of the FBI. I think that he was pleased with our recommendations, and he also had some great feedback for us. The greatest challenge for us will be ensuring that our model is sustainable.
At this point, we have had the chance to meet with several high level executives within the Bureau. It is interesting to observe the variety of backgrounds from which they come, both in government and the private sector. We have even gotten the opportunity to meet with the Director himself.
Last week we had a very interesting case discussion about the scope of the FBI's mission. I am hoping to have the case taught at Columbia with an executive from the FBI as a guest.
This summer has been a fantastic learning experience and a lot of fun. It is only the second summer that the Special Advisor program has had interns, but the internship program already seems to be a huge success. What a great summer!
