Hi everyone! My name is Alicia Peng, and I am currently a sophomore student at the University of Pittsburgh. I’m intending to double major in Marketing and Supply Chain Management and am also working towards a minor in Chinese. Aside from academics, I am actively involved in Pitt’s Asian Student Alliance and Asian Christian Fellowship on campus. Currently, I spend most of my time outside of the classroom serving as the Design chair for the Chinese American Student Association!

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, and I actually spent a lot of my childhood in Oakland. Even though I only live about 25 minutes away from Pitt’s campus, I still think of Pitt as my home away from home. Despite the fact that I have basically been in Pittsburgh my whole life, I have a huge love for travelling. I have been to about 6 countries (7 if you include a short layover I spent in Japan), and I can not wait to continue exploring new countries and meeting new people after the pandemic.

Given that I have been longing to travel for the past year, I am so thrilled and grateful to be able to participate in Pitt’s Spring 2021 Global Business Institute Virtual Internship program. The Pitt GBI program allows students to complete an international internship through studying abroad. This year, it is offered virtually due to the pandemic. I am super thankful to have the opportunity despite Covid-19. 

My placement is with a start-up called EventBuzz360 located in Sydney, Australia. “EventBuzz360 is the ultimate online platform for event professionals and anyone involved in organising an event.” Normally, suppliers have limited opportunities to market their services and products in an efficient way, but EventBuzz360 is changing the game by essentially being an online search engine for the events industry. It allows for anyone who is interested in organizing an event to find providers for the services or products they are looking for.

I will be working as a Digital Marketing intern, and will be working alongside a few other Digital Marketing interns as well. I have gotten the chance to meet a two out of the three interns I will be working closely with, and I am super excited to get to know them and work as a team. And although none of us will be physically traveling to Sydney, the CEO and founder of EventBuzz360, Nicole Santer, has already provided so much hospitality through a virtual setting and has shown us the beauty of Australia. It is also currently summer down there, and I am super jealous of the warm weather while there is currently a winter storm advisory in Pittsburgh. 

As this is my first internship, there are so many things I would like to learn from this internship. I look forward to learning more about the events industry as everything is fairly new to me, meanwhile Nicole Santer has about 20 years of events and marketing experience! Her passion for this industry and dedication in starting EventBuzz360 is incredibly inspiring to me! 

Aside from simply getting first hand experience in working in events, I hope to strengthen my qualifications and professional skills. I’m excited to apply what I have learned in class in the real world and to learn things I could not ever learn in a classroom. With this not only being a virtual internship, but also an international one, I am anticipating that I will have to be very initiative and get things done with little to no instructions. Though it might be challenging at times, I know it’ll also be super beneficial in the long run!

I’m super excited to begin this virtual internship with EventBuzz360!