Virtual Internships Abroad Unexpected Opportunity

If you had told me when I started my internship that I would end up interviewing a famous author and psychology expert whose work has been featured in Good Morning America, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR and many other media outlets and professional magazines and journals, I would not have believed you. Yet, here we are.

I started my remote internship at SURA, an insurance company headquartered in Colombia with over 17.9 million clients and over $5.2 billion in total revenue, in June 2020. I’m not going to lie, leading up to the start of my internship, I was worried that it might entail a lot of busy work at home by myself. Thankfully, I was wrong.

I was tasked with five “challenges” to complete by the end of my time at SURA. One of them was to study and gather information about financial therapy, a new, emerging field. At first, I was dreading reading research articles about the topic, but once I started, I found myself enjoying them.

My advisor then tasked me with finding and trying to contact the leading experts in the field to see if any of them would be interested in speaking with us. After much research and reading, I gathered the names and contacts of a few experts. Among them, one stood out the most. In all the literature, his name was repeated over and over again: Dr. Brad Klontz. From what I gathered, he was basically the Albert Einstein of financial therapy. I wasn’t sure if I should email him because the chances of him answering seemed very, very slim. But, “shoot your shot,” right? So I did. He didn’t answer. Sweet. So I followed up. He answered!

We coordinated a time that worked for him and a few members of my team, and I began to plan out our conversation. Since I was the most fluent English-speaker out of the workers in our branch and the one who reached out to Dr. Klontz, I was tasked with being the one to interview him. Naturally, I crammed a bunch more reading about financial therapy to assure that I would sound knowledgeable when speaking to Dr. Klontz. Although I was quite nervous at first, the conversation turned out to be extremely engaging, smooth, and educational.

The best part about my time at SURA is that I can tell my work will impact the company. My interview was shared with the Finance Vice President of the company, and all the information I gathered about financial therapy will be used to help improve their clients’ financial health.