Summer in Boston

Second year is off to a quick start, and it's hard to believe the leaves are beginning to turn color already! I finally took some needed time to reflect on my summer internship experience, and I must say, I had a blast. I spent this summer in Boston interning for Liberty Mutual in their Corporate Development program, which is their rotational management training program, and I worked on a project in Product Management for their Personal Insurance Unit. While I had some exposure to the Insurance industry prior to business school, I didn't really know what product management meant for an insurance company.

It turns out the way to manage an insurance product is to control its price, which also means you need to be able to analyze and assess the risks you are insuring. I ended up evaluating several different wildfire risk models to improve Liberty's risk assessment and pricing capabilities. It was a very quantitative project, but I had a lot of support from experts in the firm and really enjoyed working on the project.

More importantly, the internship experience also provided me with a good view into what it's like to be a general manager, and the responsibilities you have to manage a P&L. Having worked as a consultant prior to SOM, it is great to see what it's like to be on the client side. In addition, the program provided me with a tremendous amount of exposure to senior management across the entire organization, beyond just Personal Insurance. I felt that I had the opportunity to connect with several senior executives, and to get to know them on a meaningful level. Last but not least, contrary to common perceptions that insurance companies tend to be very slow moving, I felt that Liberty is a very vibrant organization and the people there are passionate about what they do.

All in all, I truly enjoyed my internship experience and it was great to check out Boston during the gorgeous summer time.