Update on MSIM summer ventures

Over the summer months, M.S. in Innovation & Management students leverage their final Innovation Sprint to gain real world experience by interning, working on an industry consulting project, launching their own venture, or starting a full-time job.

Take a look at what some of the Class of 2018 did this summer:

Sergio Abraham, Director of Innovation at Onapsis, worked on his summer sprint with Social Spark, a startup accelerator focused on diversity and inclusion, which aims to democratize access to entrepreneurship skills, support, mentoring and funding. This summer, they launched their website to find applicants of their pre-accelerator. They have 20 teams/individuals who have applied so far, and hope to have their first cohort by October.

Rahul Chavan interned at Slalom, a consulting company that designs and develops software solutions, products and experiences. “As a Solution Owner Intern, I led the software development efforts of a scrum team of 8 developers who were distributed evenly across Boston and Chicago. We built and deployed an employee chatbot to answer common HR and Ops related questions for the company’s internal use by leveraging Amazon’s Alexa and Facebook Workplace. This summer sprint served as the ideal opportunity to apply key learnings from my leadership and negotiation class with Stacy Lennon from the MSIM program. I evolved as a leader by having difficult conversations, giving and receiving feedback, and challenging assumptions and constraints. I was fortunate to have incredible mentorship from within the company.”

Chen Chen completed an internship as a Marketing Intern at China-Us Boston Innovation Center(CUBIC), which supports US-based tech startups as they leverage China’s capital, corporations and local governments, and expand market potentials in China.

Fan Chen started a full-time position as a Solutions Engineer at 6 River Systems, Inc. “The MSIM Innovation Sprints really prepared me for my current position. Throughout our sprint team projects, I learned to lead, influence, and negotiate effectively.”

Aditi Deorukhakar and Alex Rappaport continued working on their fall sprint venture ZwitterCo, which provides revolutionary membrane solutions for the treatment of highly-impaired wastewater based on cutting-edge zwitterionic polymer chemistry developed by Tufts Professor Ayse Asatekin. Their mission is to make the treatment and reuse of every wastewater stream economically viable. After placing First in the Tufts $100k New Ventures Competition in the high-tech track in the spring, they recently secured funding from Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Sijia Hu worked as an Analyst at KPMG.

Cam Irwin was a Summer Associate at BitOoda Technologies, a digital asset advisory firm specializing in trade execution, market analysis, and structured products.

Coco Lan was a member of a team of students conducting market research and making recommendations for financing for a biomedical startup focused on gene therapy.

Hayley Lough landed a full-time role as a Junior Program Manager at Adhesys Medical, a medical device startup company focused on the development of adhesives used in surgery.

Teresita Liebel began work as a Human Factors Engineer at Farm Design, Inc. “Working in interdisciplinary teams of designers and engineers, I am responsible for usability testing and design ethnography of our medical and life sciences products. MSIM prepared me to dig deeper to find the root cause of a customer’s potential problem.”

Brendon Meknavin was an Analyst at Lux Research, a research and advisory firm, that provides strategic advice and ongoing intelligence on emerging technologies.

Sam Miller started working as an Operating Advisor at GreyBird Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm focused on medical technology.

Nuermaimaiti Pazilaiti began her 6-month internship as a Digital Marketing Intern at iRobot, a leading global consumer robot company.

Rahul Rakhit moved to New York and started in his new role as an Equity Research Associate at LifeSci Capital, a research-driven investment back, where he looks for R&D or early commercial-stage companies that have the potential to bring meaningful treatments to people in need, and tells their story in a way that is compelling to investors and venture capitalists. “My job actually aligns perfectly with almost every course in the MSIM program. We spent so much time developing the tools to analyze companies and derive our own thoughts towards their competitive differentiation and ability to navigate the industry’s landscape; I was light years ahead of the other first year associates when I joined.”

Sagun Sanghi was a Strategy Intern at The All Well Store, where he used agile methodology to manage website development identified new business partnerships, and used analytics to come up with new marketing strategies.

Timothy Savidge launched his career as a Consultant at Navigant, a consulting firm that primarily serves clients in the healthcare, energy, and financial services industries.

Adam Tracht landed a position as a Product Owner at Jet.com.

Zach Zager landed a position as a Product Manager at Onapsis, a cybersecurity solutions company.