Intern Success Story: Supangpim “Pim” Khunrattanaphon
By Quentin Boose, Process improvement intern
October 29, 2018
With a keen eye and desire to combine data with business, Pim Khunrattanaphon used the Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) internship program to launch her business intelligence career. As a budget analyst intern for the Office of Financial Management and Budget from November 2016 to May 2017, Pim oversaw budget requests from 32 CDOT departments, forecasted revenue out until 2040, and streamlined CDOT’s budget process.
From Bangkok to Denver
Originally from Bangkok, Thailand, Pim received her Master’s Degree from the University of Colorado, Denver in Information Systems. After finishing school, Pim wanted to stay in Colorado. She joined CDOT and immediately started applying her analytical skills in a work environment in the United States. Differing from her past work experience, Pim said, “You can bring whatever idea you have to improve yourself or improve the organization. [The company] allows you to think out of the box.” Adding, “The people at CDOT are the best part of the organization, they do not care where you are from and are very open to trying ideas that you have.”
Photo of Pim Khunrattanaphon
Creativity in Business Intelligence
Described as a “rock star” by her former colleagues, Pim was skillful in summarizing large amounts of data and having a knack for reading between the lines to construct meaningful budget report summaries. Piper Frode, Budget & Policy Analyst for High-Performance Transportation Enterprise, (and former CDOT intern,) describes Pim as possessing, “strong written and communication skills as she was making reports used by the executive team at CDOT.” Pim had the ability to translate excel data into compelling charts and other visualizations to communicate results. These visuals better demonstrated the Department’s revenue forecasts so executive managers could base strategic decisions on the visuals that Pim made.
Continuing Communication
In the nine months Pim spent as an analyst at CDOT, she established, “A foundation of business analytics in order to get a job after the internship.” From the tangible projects and real work experience, she learned transferable skills for a job landed after CDOT. Pim is currently a Business Intelligence developer at Charter Communications, in Greenwood Village, Colorado, providing data analysis and researching solutions via Standard Query Language (SQL). She accredits her internship in providing, “real, meaningful work and projects that were used by CDOT every day.” Today, Pim’s work is more technical, involving high-end data software and in-depth analytical tools. She still uses her creativity to present communication data and innovative designs in a similar way to the budget predictions at CDOT. Her advice to other interns? “Speak out, share your ideas, and show you can make them happen.”