While here in Sydney, I am interning at a company called Metluma. Metluma is a healthcare start-up for an online women’s health portal centered around supporting women and the challenges they face while going through menopause. This health portal will be used to provide information, advice, treatment, and connect patients with the doctors on our team for both short and long term care. The main goal of this organization is to market to women in an empathetic and human-focused way and ultimately provide them with exceptional patient care.
The Metluma team is very small as it consists of my supervisor, two doctors that she has partnered with, and a few other members who are involved in operations and logistics. I work on the University of New South Wales campus, as my supervisor has access to the office space and facilities there. The area of campus that I work in is super lively and is always bustling with students and different events each week, especially with orientation week being last week. I go into the office in person on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I work remotely on Mondays and Wednesdays on a number of different tasks that my supervisor gives me to complete on my own time.
My role at this company is titled as a ‘Marketing Intern’ and my responsibilities have varied throughout my first month working here. Since this company was just recently branded and has not yet been launched, there has been a lot of work to do to prepare for it. At first, I was doing quite a bit of competitive analysis of other brands similar to ours. I was also doing a lot of research on menopause in order to fully understand the challenges that women go through during this phase in their lives. I have recently taken on a role as their social media strategist and have been kick-starting all of their social media accounts, including Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I have also been working on a variety of different design content as well as writing blog posts for their website. Even though I have only been here for a month, I’ve already been able to conduct a great deal of user research and strengthen the company’s overall objectives to support the needs of women.
Some of the key skills and strengths needed to be successful while interning internationally are good communication, intercultural competence, and open-mindedness. There are definitely a number of differences I have noticed about the Australian workplace culture vs. that of the U.S., some of the main things being that Australians are more relaxed as well as more team-oriented. I think that having these specific skills has allowed me to adapt more easily in an environment that I am less familiar with. Ultimately, I’m enjoying the work that I’ve been doing so far and I am really looking forward to watching this brand take off from the ground up.
Until next time!
Olivia