Internship Spotlight: Jennifer Suh ’26, Henkel Consumer Brands
Jennifer Suh spent her summer exploring a career in consumer goods as a marketing intern for a major hair product brand.
Internship: Henkel Consumer Brands, Stamford, Connecticut
Hometown: Princeton, New Jersey
Pronouns: she/her/hers
The SOM class you’re using on the job: Competitor, Customer, Emerging Trends in Digital Advertising, Managing Marketing Programs
Go-to work lunch: The salad bar or the daily specials at the office cafeteria
After-work routine: Go for a run, meet friends for dinner, catch up on reading
Favorite thing about Stamford: The opportunity to explore a new city with fellow interns; the SOM classmates and former colleagues I met and reconnected with on the Metro-North!
As I started my first year at Yale SOM, I aimed to build on my background in strategic communications and pivot to a new industry. After hearing about brand management through second-year students, I was drawn to this field for its blend of strategic, analytical, and creative work, all rooted in general management skills. With my interests in the retail and consumer goods industries, I was immediately attracted to Henkel’s global presence and leading brands across multiple categories, including hair, laundry, and home care.
This summer, I worked as a brand management and marketing intern on the hair innovation team, where I led a strategy and analytics project to guide the launch of a new product line for the hair brand Schwarzkopf. Over 10 weeks, I dove into the hair category, learning about our products and competitors, and attended cross-functional meetings, where I was able to develop a deeper understanding of how my project aligns with the brand’s broader business objectives.
Brand management is truly about collaborating with various internal and external stakeholders and having an entrepreneurial mindset, and I felt empowered by my team to step into this role and challenge myself to think critically about the business and contribute my ideas. Each conversation I had with brand managers and cross-functional teams helped me move closer to my final recommendations, as I gathered consumer insights, synthesized market trends, and analyzed syndicated data to identify strategic opportunities for Schwarzkopf to differentiate itself and drive incremental sales.
Throughout the project, I applied concepts from the core curriculum and my elective classes, which provided me with a strong foundation to conduct in-depth competitive benchmarking and generate insights from multiple data sources. I frequently referred to frameworks taught in Competitor, case studies discussed in Customer, and industry perspectives shared by experts and practitioners in Emerging Trends in Digital Advertising and Managing Marketing Programs.
Our final presentations to the chief marketing officer and the brand teams gave me the chance to apply all of the lessons from my first year at SOM and my previous experiences in strategic communications. In the week leading up to our presentations, I found myself reflecting on the talks organized by the Yale Center for Customer Insights, as well as my involvement with the Women’s Leadership Conference and Retail Club, in order to communicate most effectively to senior marketing leaders.
This internship allowed me to immerse myself in general management and marketing and make a real impact on a global consumer brand through meaningful projects. I’m grateful to the Henkel colleagues who met with me and shared their guidance, and for the opportunities throughout the summer to connect with leaders across the company and meet with the R&D team to learn about the chemistry behind hair care products and the importance of innovation in the consumer goods industry. As I begin my second year of the MBA program, I’m looking forward to applying my learnings in the classroom and on future projects and engaging with the SOM community.
