Company

Host Testimonial

Intern Testimonial

Element Bars

Our KEIP summer intern, Tom Valentin, was an invaluable asset over the summer. With his unique background in hospitality, Tom brought a fresh view to our organization. In addition, he was able to immediately apply the skills he learned in the first year at Kellogg to urgent operation issues we faced at Element Bars. For example, Tom was able to calculate our inventory reorder points, allowing us to better manage our inventory holding costs and customer service level. The real benefit of the KEIP program was a list of pre-screened candidates and the simplified paperwork associated with bringing on an intern.

Jonathan Miller (2008) – CEO and Founder

Working with Kellogg grad Jonathan Miller at Element Bars through KEIP proved to be a very rewarding experience. Element Bars offers its customers the ability to customize the ingredients they want in their energy bars and ships a freshly baked product to their door in approximately one week. Throughout the summer I helped with both the day-to-day operations as well as long term marketing and strategic planning. As the only other full-time employee for the summer, my responsibilities included everything from overseeing baking operations and testing new products, to developing marketing surveys and conducting an operations audit. In short, I was expected to be flexible and work independently and was constantly multi-tasking. At the same time, Jonathan provided good guidance on what he expected and his passion for the business made it very easy to work with him. At the end of the summer, we both felt the eight weeks had been very productive and were happy with the results. I had experienced true bootstrap entrepreneurship without the risk associated with starting my own venture and had provided Jonathan with an extra set of hands for day-to-day operations and a fresh set of eyes to evaluate the state of his business.

Thomas Valentin (2010)

ShoreCap Management Ltd.

The intern we engaged for the summer, Oladipo Odelowo, completed his stint with us on Friday.  I wanted to express that in the 13 years that I have hosted summer interns, this year’s experience has been the best.  Dipo was not only intelligent, and experienced, what set him apart was his painstakingly attentive approach to each and every assignment given to him, not just focusing on the most interesting tasks. He put in many hours beyond what was expected of him in order to gain experience in several aspects of our business and his reward for all of his good works, was that we kept adding more assignments.  Finally, as I have found with many Kellogg students Dipo was very personable and enjoyable.  Thanks for helping us to accomplish so much more this summer with Dipo’s help.

Leslie Davis

ShoreCap Management Ltd. (ShoreCap International)
KEIP was an invaluable experience as it gave me a great platform to build on the skills I had developed both before and at Kellogg. My work at ShoreCap had immediate relevance to the firm’s new fund and recommendations from the projects I worked on were speedily implemented. Most importantly, I am very happy my work will contribute to the global effort to end poverty by providing greater access to credit for the world’s poor.

Oladipo Odelowo (2010)

MyServiceVine

Ash was huge asset to MyServiceVine.  Ash defined and conducted marketing survey, energized and refreshed marketing pages on MyServiceVine.com, defined service provider pages on MyServiceVine.com and defined our charity donations program.  Thank you, Ash.

David May – CEO

Snaphawk

For eight weeks at Snaphawk, I opened my eyes on entrepreneurship in the States. My background is investment banking in Korea. Even though I’ve worked with lots of venture companies before, I didn’t realize how dynamic the entrepreneur world is and how passionate and hardworking entrepreneur is.  More importantly, learning US entrepreneur’s working style and his/her entrepreneurial mind set which I gained this summer, would be one of the most precious assets for my future career. Working for smaller companies would give you more valuable experiences for your career life. I strongly recommend would-be entrepreneurs to jump into KEIP adventures.

Yong Hyun Kim (2010)

Perchance Boutique

We had the fortune of hosting Jennifer Beall, our first KEIP summer intern, this past summer.   At the beginning of her internship, Jen was handed a list of 20 projects across many areas of our business including marketing, strategy, inventory management, accounting and human resources.  Jen was an amazing resource on all of these projects and was very hard working.  She worked closely with our management team on many of these projects and infused a new energy, fresh perspective and smart efficiency into our processes.  Jen created and executed our social networking strategy.  She also led the effort in determining the best approach for Google search optimization and our effort to be listed on our vendor’s websites, together resulting in a direct increase in web sales. Jen is a fantastic multi-tasker and she was willing to learn and excel in areas such as retail sales, inventory management and accounting for retail.  As a Kellogg alum and also a former consultant, I really loved that she used her consulting and management skills as well as her knowledge directly from class as resources/reference points in the boutique.  I also appreciated Jen’s unique insights on my staff as her perspective was very valuable, especially since her educational and professional background are similar to mine.   The KEIP program is unique because the type of people who are vetted for this have the perfect disposition and desire to excel in an entrepreneurial environment.  I would hire Jen full-time after she completes Kellogg!

Mary-Liz Lehman - Founder

I had a tremendous experience in the KEIP working with Perchance Boutique. The owner was not on site very frequently and let me take the reins, so I became the Marketer, the Accountant, the Sales person, the Customer Service Representative, the IT person, the lawyer and the HR professional. Wearing so many different hats truly taught me that being an entrepreneur requires problem solving abilities across a wide range of topics, whether you’re an expert in them or not!

Jennifer Beall (2010)