Personal Contributions to Work Culture and Client Deliverables

One of the areas of the office I feel like I contributed a lot to was the onboarding process. Avascent hasn’t yet set a date for when people will begin to transition back to working in the office, so they interviewed all the summer analysts so we became involved in  creating the new onboarding process for the full times joining in the fall. For  example, we helped reorganize the order of training and recommended that there was at least one session a day for a “coffee break” with their mentors so they  had some casual ‘getting to know you’ conversations as well.

Most largely, I was able to help plan, organize, and execute the slides used to brief clients. Through the internal meetings,  my opinions were used to shape the way we  presented to clients and I felt heard by my superiors (especially since analysts become the subject matter experts as they spend  the most time doing “in the weeds” research). Specifically, I built many slides on competitor profiles on my Lockheed Martin project that  required me to research contract histories and create predictions on where they were investing next based on their internal research and development spending. On my second project with the Govt of Canada  I spent most of my time building workable definitions for quantum  technology and adjacent sectors as well as compiling a master list of all  firms working in the sector in Canada.

Our summer analyst class also hosted  a weekly happy hour/game night for anyone in the office to join. Even though it wasn’t  directly related to the work we were doing it helped integrate us into company  culture and gave the  full  time hires a  way to hang out remotely with their coworkers as well.

Overall, I felt like I was lucky to  feel as if the majority of what I was spending time doing was impacting either a final work product or internal initiatives in the company. Despite  the remote work setting I was always  on a team (sometimes more than one) that met at least once a day to check in on our progress with work. Through the many different streams of hierarchy, there were always ways to  provide feedback on your  bosses or team  members and you could  see the feedback being reflected as time went on.