My Time as a Vaudevillian

An internship at a small consulting group was not what I assumed I’d be doing this summer based on what I wrote in my Personal Plan paper. I knew I was interested in childhood education because of my background in tutoring and teaching, as well as politics and history because of my academic interests. Looking back, it makes sense that I was drawn to Vaudeville Ventures for its unintimidating, small-company environment that allowed me to develop skills in critical thinking, problem solving and communication. In my Site Contribution paper, I was reminded of a conversation with someone I met at Jepson Edge who said something along the lines of, “leadership students make good consultants because of our ability to take on an issue holistically, and our skills in critical thinking allow us to thrive in that setting.” An internship in consulting meant an entire new experience for me, and I was convinced that I had many of the skills that would allow me to thrive in the industry. While I still do believe that work in education or politics could be for me at some point, the new people, skills and experiences at Vaudeville Ventures were ones that I wouldn’t have experienced if I had stuck to my status quo interests in education and politics that I discussed in my Personal Plan paper last winter.

I had an idea of the skills I would be able to develop during my internship because of the conversations I’d had with my close friend who was an intern at Vaudeville Ventures during the winter term. We worked on some of the same projects and interacted with the same people by coincidence; however, I was exposed to projects I didn’t expect to see during my time at Vaudeville Ventures. A little under half of my time in the office was devoted to a start-up business targeted for people aged 50+ called Brightly. I had never worked at a start-up and knew nothing about the market for people 50+ or the lack of competitors of the largest organization for people over 50, AARP. These factors made the Brightly project the one where I developed my critical thinking and problem-solving skills the most. I wrote about my goal to work on these skills in my Site Description and Personal Contribution paper, citing Vaudeville Ventures’ mission to “drive change from within” and my hope to contribute to that. My work as the intern on the Brightly team consisted of sitting in on production meetings and investor pitches, contributing my ideas when the team couldn’t find a solution to various roadblocks they encountered, and providing insight based on my research. These tasks allowed me think about solving problems and provide my own ideas that would assist the team in approaching these problems. I felt like I was helping to “drive change from within” because I could see tangible progress the project made week by week.

Through my work as the intern on one of the more traditional client projects at Vaudeville Ventures, I learned about the ways in which there are real impediments to “driving change from within” when working with businesses as consultants. One of our clients was a large company based in D.C., Fiscal Note/CQ Roll Call. As I wrote in my Site Description paper, “inciting change within a group or organization can only happen by attacking the root of the problem.” I found that the Vaudeville Ventures team often had to work within the limits set by the client. The team described to me that this client was unusual in that they did not have a clear idea of what they wanted out of their engagement with Vaudeville Ventures. This meant that many weekly check ins with the team from Fiscal Note/CQ Roll Call did not accomplish anything and felt like a mundane task rather than actual progress towards inciting change within the company. This experience taught me a lot about the constraints that client work poses – whether it be the budget, absence of ownership of the company’s initiatives, or lack of a vision about the changes the company wanted to see –  and these factors all serve as roadblocks to helping companies change and grow. Nonetheless, the slow movement in this project taught me about critical thinking and problem solving within the constraints imposed by a large company. I was grateful to see both sides of how projects pan out in the consulting industry. It isn’t realistic to assume that every company is fast-growing and without roadblocks, so my work on Brightly and Fiscal Note/CQ Roll Call was valuable for my understanding of the limits of progress and change in the consulting industry. I wrote in my Site Description Paper, “Vaudeville Ventures’ breadth of clients from various industries will give me exposure and experience in many industries” and help me decide if consulting was for me. My participation on a range of projects allowed me to understand the how the nature of projects can be greatly altered by the clients’ needs and desires, and the ways in which consultants can respond and act within those limits.

In my Site Description Paper, I discussed my goal to work on my presentation and communication skills during my internship. While I’m not a seasoned presenter, I have worked on these skills during my internship. During my day to day work, I would often present my research findings to strategists and execs. They challenged me to explain why I came to certain conclusions, which forced me to think quickly and respond with authority. Moreover, I wrote in my learning contract that I would give a presentation at the end of my internship that would help me gauge my progress in presentation and public speaking. Two other interns, a project manager and I worked for a few weeks on a group presentation on the advertising landscape today, loosely based on the 2018 Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report. We worked to establish the best ways to keep our audience engaged during a casual but informative fifteen-minute presentation. It was valuable to run through the presentation with various Vaudeville Ventures employees who would give us honest criticism. When the time came to present, I was much more confident having gone through my part after many run-throughs and rounds of edits. Going forward, I plan on employing this approach to my presentations in school and in the future, as this collaboration with more seasoned presenters made our presentation more engaging. At Vaudeville Ventures, I was thrown into everyday research assignments and had to defend my findings and conclusions later on. This kept me on my toes and helped me become more at ease when communicating and presenting.

I found that the environment I worked in was one of the best places to witness leadership head-on because of its small size and the employees’ common attitude of wanting to teach their interns. Vaudeville Ventures was unique in that I worked with and learned directly from the people who run the company. I sat in on their internal meetings and client calls, often taking notes, but when I was simply observing, I reflected on the interactions between people at the company, with clients, and my own judgments of those interactions through a leadership lens. My tendency to do so was solidified after last semester in Theories and Models, as we were exposed to leadership theories that can be applied to everyday interactions in the context of organizations and businesses. I reflected on how the social identity theory was especially relevant in terms of how employees at Vaudeville Ventures felt about their role at the company, as well as how my own ILTs helped form my judgments about the leaders of the company. Because of my participation on the Brightly project, I was able to witness the formation of leadership within the company, and I couldn’t help but think to myself about the ways in which the small team could benefit from committing to solve their personal issues with each other rather than ignoring them.

Being a Leadership Studies major not only made me more analytical in the way I thought about the people, interactions and the work I witnessed, but also more conscientious in how I approached my own work. When I was asked to do a landscape analysis for a Senior Content Manager, she later commented, “it was well-written and structured, but what made it especially helpful (and different from the others) was that she had synthesized info and used good judgement and her time really well.” I think that this ability to synthesize information wisely is a trait that leadership students develop because we’re taught to approach problems holistically and with attention to detail. While it is sometimes difficult to put into words the difference that being a student in Leadership Studies makes, I felt that the co-worker who pointed out my strength in synthesizing information sums up the way I have learned to approach my work in the past three years because of Jepson.