Week 6: Personal Contributions

At the beginning of the internship, we were given an outline of tasks we would need to accomplish over the next 10 weeks from our intern program directors. Outside of our assigned work from our prospective managers and teams, this list was a bit overwhelming, but I was excited about the opportunity to showcase lots of different skills and abilities.

During the overview of this outlines, us interns were split into 10 groups of 6 or 7, referred to as pods, and we were told we would have to put together some type of volunteer event. Initially, I could not help but be overwhelmed. I had not yet gotten a real sense of what my work would look like outside of orientation week, and I was nervous about the time commitment of putting together a volunteer event, and a virtual one at that. After that initial reflection, I reframed that worry into an opportunity mindset and took the ambiguity of the assignment as a window of creativity to showcase my personal contributions as a leader and a strong planner.

After much self-convincing and reflection, we had our first meeting as a pod where we ranked a list of partner organizations we would like to work with to put on this volunteer event. All 7 of us came from all different schools, different business units with the company, and of course – always relating back to leadership- different leadership styles. Some of us were quiet, others were a bit more outspoken and I definitely found myself in the latter category. Being in such a small group, in combination with my tendencies to take charge on group projects, I quickly became our groups spoke person; reaching out to our partner organization and setting up our recurring meeting times.

When my work and other projects picked up, and the deadline to host the volunteer event was on the horizon, I realized doing pretty much everything for the group was not sustainable. As a group we delegated tasks pretty evenly: two people moderated the event, two people worked on the slide deck for the event, one person created the invite and collected necessary pre-event materials and the rest picked up things as we went along – which ended up being a fair share of work in the end. Although it took a while for everyone to pick up their own personal contributions, I can confidently say I am proud of my personal contributions to our volunteer event and it ended up being an incredibly successful one.

Our event was titled a Discussion on Disabilities and we had over 60 colleagues join the event. After some initial issues with our external partner organization for the project, we decided to take the event internal and connect with colleagues in a colleague resource group that specializes in supporting colleagues with all types of disabilities in the workplace. We invited panelists to speak on their personal experiences working with CVS and navigating the corporate environment regarding disability in the workplace. Some feedback we got after the event were comments like: “This event was great because it provided the platform and foundation for a conversation we do not have enough”- which is exactly what we were going for with the event and the discussion.

I think this event and the planning leading up to it was a good look into what life as a full-time CVS Health employee is like. Many people in the full-time after-college rotation program are involved in other roles outside of their team roles: the DEI committee, volunteer committee, mentorship committee, etc. After being a part of planning a volunteer event and working out the kinks in any type of group project early on, I can see myself taking what I learned and contributing to a committee like that in the future. The best part about this volunteer event project was how far I came from being overwhelmed, to being a leader and ultimately being really proud of what we were able to accomplish as a group and what I was able to contribute personally to the group and the greater good and the larger CVS community.