Ideas Ignited: Tech Square Summer Interns Share Experiences

With a focus on cultivating connections designed to foster growth and innovation, we at Tech Square ATL (TSQATL) were ecstatic when one of our tenants requested a “meet-and-greet” style event where interns of all the amazing companies in Tech Square could get to know each other and learn more about the exciting work that’s happening within in our buildings. After all, that’s what we’re here for – helping to facilitate interactions that otherwise wouldn’t occur!

Our Innovation, Ideas, and Interns stemmed from the request of Maddie Harper, the Go-to-Market Program Manager at Engage, a corporate innovation venture platform designed to support startups and a byproduct of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) here at Centergy. With our shared goals of building a stronger sense of community, and uncovering what each company’s internship program offers, we set up in the lobby during lunch to help form these serendipitous collisions. 
Over complimentary catering from Chick-fil-A, attendees mixed and mingled while sharing their experiences thus far and projects they’ve been working on. It was inspiring to see interns from Engage, The University Financing Foundation (TUFF), Tech Square Ventures, Delta, Southwire Spark, and Georgia Tech’s MARGA Labs all interact with one another, with the hopes of actually sparking connections that would withstand beyond the duration of their internships:

We also got to learn more about the intricacies of a few particular participants: 

Joseph Covington

A finance intern at TUFF, Joseph is researching universities and research parks this summer. He is a finance major at Georgia State University and would like to go into wealth asset management after graduation.

Taylor Hicks

An intern at Engage, Taylor is working on graphic design this summer.

Chinar Dankhara

Chinar is doing his summer internship at Delta. A student at the Georgia Tech College of Computing, he is working on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) models during his internship. He is also completing a software engineering internship at NCR this summer.

Manu Gummaraju

An intern at Engage, Manu helped organize an executive reception for Independent Sales Organization (ISO) people.

Following the event, contact info was swapped and promises were made to stay in touch and continue doing great work!

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DID YOU KNOW?

Students who took paid internships or co-ops were more likely to receive an offer of full-time employment and a higher salary offer from their employers than were students who took unpaid internships or co-ops, according to results of NACE’s Class of 2015 Student Survey.

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What’s your dream internship? Let us know in the comments below.