Hi! I am Jillian DeSando and I am a rising senior at the University of Pittsburgh in the College of Business Administration. I am double majoring in Business Information Systems and Supply Chain Management. I have my Tableau Desktop Certification from completing a course at Pitt. I am involved in L.E.A.P. club and Sigma Sigma Sigma Sorority. I am from Scranton, PA, about 4.5 hours from Pittsburgh.

Aside from school, I work at a gymnastics facility, hangout with my family and dog, go for food with my friends, listen to Taylor Swift, and watch Jeopardy every night with my dad. Being home the past 3 weeks I made sure to go to all of my favorite restaurants. My favorite is Pancheros for either a burrito or quesadilla, and the queso of course. Last weekend I went to the Taylor Swift concert in Philly and had the best night. I also got to see my sister compete at her first high school track districts meet and my brother graduate from Virginia Tech.

When I am in Berlin this summer, I will be interning at Vencon Research. I will be apart of the data automation team. I am excited to learn new things and apply what I learned from my courses in Business Information Systems and Supply Chain Management. I have a very strong background in excel, so I am expecting those skills to be useful. The courses I have taken with different coding platforms will also be useful because the languages are very transferable. I am hoping to get a lot out of this internship because I am not fully sure what I want to do after college. Right now I want to do something with data automation or data integrity, so this internship will give me a feel for what I like or do not like.

I chose this program because I wanted to do an internship and go abroad. I switched my major from Civil Engineering to Business Information Systems in my forth semester at Pitt. Since I switched so late, there was not an opportunity for me to go abroad for a whole semester. The International Internship Program allows me to go abroad and have a full time internship. I like that the internship is tailored to my specific interests and goals. I chose to go to Berlin because it is a big city with lots of business opportunities. I also chose Berlin because I have German heritage. It is exciting to be able to fully emerge myself into the culture.

From this program, I hope to gain a better understanding of how different cultures compare to one another on many different aspects. It will be interesting to see how day to day activities are done differently, even just going to the store to buy groceries. The differences of how business is conducted will give me an interesting perspective going into my final year of college. From what I have learned from research and orientations, Germans are very straight forward. They do not sugar coat anything. I am expecting the way people talk and act around each other is different than in the U.S.. As I briefly said earlier, I am also hoping to solidify what I want to do after college. Since my internship will be something I am interested in, it will help me figure out if it is something I will want to do for a career. Even if I decide that I do not want to do data automation, the internship will not be a waste. I will be learning more about data automation and myself through the process. I look forward to learning more about data automation and I think my knowledge from getting my Tableau Desktop Certification will be helpful. Finally, I am excited to meet everyone from Pitt doing this program. We will create a bond from this experience that I will not have with anyone else.

I am very excited to go to Berlin. This will be a great opportunity overall. I am a little nervous about going to a new place and having to adjust, but I know it will all be worth it. I am also a little nervous to be arriving a day early. Since there are three of us coming a day earlier, that makes it a little less nerve racking. We can figure out getting from the airport to the hotel together. I am sad to be leaving my family, but my parents are coming to visit at the end. I expect these next two months to have some challenges, but I think it will fly by.