Global Engineering & Facilities Intern

This year has undoubtedly been a different one, but I am so thankful for Genentech continuing to offer their internships virtually. It was definitely weird realizing that I have not seen my coworkers in person over the three months of my internship, but I still made sure to set up individual virtual meetings to get to know everyone.

Growing up in the Bay Area, I have heard the name Genentech many times, but I never realized how big the company actually was or even that they are the founder of biotechnology. I worked in the Transformation Office for Genentech's Strategy and Engineering organization, where I helped to lead and enable their agile transformation. Some things I did to assist were:

• Facilitating weekly Transformation Office meetings to encourage conversation and obtain updates.

• Conducting change management interviews from key employees to compile their feedback and help leadership develop a change management strategy.

• Compiling essential resources on Leadership, New Ways of Working, Communication, and other tools for a transformation toolkit. Created a framework for the toolkit and housed it on the gSite to allow others to understand the purpose of transformation and how it is beneficial.

• Updated the gSite and Wiki pages of the different workstreams on Confluence to keep coworkers updated on the progress of transformation.

One challenging part of this internship is the fact that it is global. I constantly found myself having to wake up at 6 am for meetings with colleagues in Switzerland. However, I soon adjusted and looked forward to the opportunities I had to facilitate these meetings. I learned to start with a tune-in question to warm up to conversation (my favorite was "Are you an early-bird or night owl?"), ask if anyone had any pressing topics to discuss, going over the agenda, and ending on our Trello board with everyone providing updates.

Although this internship was not very technical, I learned many important soft skills such as team collaboration, customer feedback, and facilitation. Additionally, I also completed Agile 101, Design Thinking, and Scrum trainings.

This internship gave me a lot of insight into how a large company is structured, and how much goes behind project planning and leadership. It encouraged me to be creative and opened my eyes to how much more could be learned beyond my coursework in college. I have learned so much through my interactions with my coworkers, especially since many of them are experienced in project/program management.

What working from home looks like: