GRIP, Internships Abroad Mid-Internship Reflection

Ualá - Buenos Aires, Argentina

The project that I am currently working on is developing Ualá’s first-ever Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy to be reviewed and implemented by the company's leadership in the coming future. Ualá’s employee count has almost reached a thousand from only about two hundred just before the pandemic. This drastic growth comes with new challenges for internal people management and analytics, especially with regards to diversity and inclusion, as it is a hot topic in the business world in recent years. My goal to develop Ualá’s short- and long-term strategy is not to jump on the bandwagon and engage with these topics on a superficial level; my supervisor and I are determined to walk the talk by creating actual impacts with clearly defined metrics to advance workplace diversity and inclusion. In this process, I am developing research communication and Spanish skills that will be transferable to my future careers. I have also gained a much better understanding of Argentina’s cultural and historical background, which furthered my existing fascination for this country.

The local agency in Argentina in charge of the interns held a session that invited a professor who introduced to us the modern history of Argentina and how that had impacted people’s lives today. Although I have learned about the historical events before, the professor gave me a new understanding of its history from a local perspective, filtering out the noises that often came with political debates. I was surprised to learn how those events such as the legacy of Peronism are still relevant in today’s politics and people’s everyday lives. Other aspects of Argentine culture, including football, tango, asado, mate tea, etc., have all been introduced to me through a mix of online research, conversation with colleagues, and cultural immersion sessions.

One thing I found interesting about working in Ualá, or maybe doing a remote internship in general, is the variety of online platforms being used for internal and external communication. On day one, I was registered through Slack, Monday.com, Workplace, and Gmail, and I have been using Zoom and Google Meet daily for meetings and check-ins. It has been a total virtual immersion even though I am working on the other side of Earth in my own apartment in Philly. I could easily reach out to my colleagues using any of these platforms when I needed to ask them questions or just have a chat in general. I’ve enjoyed how these online tools have brought us closer without being in a physical office space together.

This internship experience has helped to navigate how I can leverage my Penn education, my unique backgrounds, and personal experiences as I am about to graduate from Penn soon. As an international student in the US with the experience of working for a Latin American company, I possess the global perspective engaging with topics related to international development especially associated with people analytics and skill set that would allow me to connect with a broad audience. Being able to understand the three most widely spoken languages in the world – Mandarin, English, and Spanish – gives me the comparative advantage to advance projects/programs in many areas of the world where these languages are used. Now, I am constantly looking for opportunities in the domain of NGOs and international organizations that share this global perspective and have operations abroad, particularly those that advance human rights and improve lives through institutional interventions. This internship has made me realize the joy of working bilingually in a multicultural environment, something I found to be rather enriching both on a personal and professional level. I truly treasure this sort of working style and hope to continue expanding my cultural horizons in my future career.