My supervisor is the CEO of the company. His responsibilities include essentially running the entire company from the ground up. He oversees client relationships, tries to acquire funding, and runs operations. My team is that of financial services within the company. Daily life includes assembling and editing pitch decks for institutional investors, aiding the accountant with budgeting and funding allocation, and analysis/development of the company’s financial statements. We also have been tasked with doing market research and developing potential revenue models for various services the company may roll out. We tend to get into work by 9am, have a meeting, perform tasks for the day, have an end of the day meeting, then are out of the door by 6pm.
One of the interesting personal experiences I have had within HCMC was certainly a grab ride on a motorbike. The traffic here is an epic chaos. Streetlights are essentially non-existent, road rules do not apply. Any larger vehicle typically bullies their way through the millions (yes, millions) of scooters that assemble the main traffic congestion in HCMC. My experience was more of a roller coaster ride than your typical “Uber”. My driver was certainly skilled at navigating the local traffic, weaving in and out of cars and other scooters as he pleased. At one point we even leaped up onto the sidewalk to skip a half mile or so of traffic. After all, each ride has a fixed price so the quicker each trip, the higher his profits each day will be. At no point did I feel unsafe though. I was surprisingly calm among the insanity around me, as I trusted my driver dealt with this on a daily basis. It really was an interesting experience, and I would recommend the experience to those who seek something more interesting than the typical car ride.
My SCAZMA internship has been picking up recently as a new senior architect was hired for the AWAY Hotel project. I was able to meet my boss who is the CEO of the Vietnam and Cambodia branches of the company. She is a very high energy and friendly individual. She travels back and forth to Cambodia and Vietnam on an almost weekly basis. She oversees all projects and can run two companies quite efficiently.
My team in Vietnam deals mainly with interior design aspects of the projects with some help on exterior reinforcements. I can help with the design concepts in a variety of ways. It has been very exciting to create design concepts while learning different architecture software. This week I was able to conduct some research on rain shutters and help find a suitable design to allow for protection from rain whilst not obstructing the view or air flow into the outdoor sections of the hotel. I am also currently working on AutoCAD plans and elevations of the guest rooms in the hotel. I am particularly happy with this job because it is allowing me to learn more about a vital skill for my field. The elevations are also giving me some creative freedom with designing the views of the room from different viewpoints. After starting this assignment, my excitement for working in the company has been increasing each day. I feel more and more welcomed every day that I work, and my confidence in in my ability to take on projects has also grown.
SCAZMA is a very good small company to start in, everyone is very friendly and welcoming. I really enjoy the group lunches we do; it helps the office feel more like a family as we work our long hours together. As I spend more time with them, we can become more friendly and casual with each other, which is a very significant workplace experience for me. I find most of my experiences to be interesting and fun, but the one that sticks for me happened at work. When talking to some of the people in my office bout Vietnamese words that I knew, one of the other interns asked if I wanted a Vietnamese name. He said I could be Ly with an accent leading up on the y, and we proceeded to laugh and perform various hand gestures for me to get the pronunciation correct. This led to others joining in and getting Vietnamese names. I enjoyed this experience particularly because it helped me gain more confidence to communicate more with the people who didn’t know English as well. By the end of the day we were sharing song recommendations and laughing about the particulars of the showers, toilet paper rolls, and toilet hoses. This experience left me feeling very lighthearted and comfortable in my workspace despite being in a completely foreign country.
After spending my second week at my internship with Infinity
Blockchain Labs, I have learned so much and becoming involved with the company.
During this second week I had the chance to meet the CEO, who resulted to be a
great person. As I settle in the company, I have made connections with people
in different departments. I think that is one of the key aspects of this
experience, to network and build relations.
Another factor that helped practicing networking skills was our business event with CRCC Asia. We had keynote speakers who represented some of the companies that people from the program are interning with. IBL was one of them, leading me to establish a meaningful conversation with the head of HR. Hopefully that helps getting involved in more projects as the status of my company as a fast-growing entity has required me to spend the first couple of weeks doing mostly research. Being a new intern makes me one to impress the most, which could seem difficult if not involved in important decisions and projects. But I have made the most of it and developed deep and well-organized reports that lead to recognition from two of my supervisors and a future meeting with a prospective client this week.
Traveling wise, some people went to a small beach town and an even
smaller group went to Malaysia for a quick peek. I decided to rest and attend a
soccer match with people from my company, you know, networking opportunity.
There is already a trip planned for the first week of July, so I will just see
this as a battery charging weekend.
Overall, Saigon is full of opportunities, but as a fast pace city, you must have a “go for it” mentality or time will go by you really quick. I already feel like I have been here for months. And, as much as I feel like I miss home and have already done so much here, I am sure that when time comes for me to leave, I will feel like I needed more time from this place.”
My supervisor is the head of marketing for GINAR at Infinity Blockchain Labs (IBL). He is in charge of coordinating marketing efforts to boost the company’s awareness. Specifically, he sets and monitors marketing goals, helps prepare for events that promote the company, and creates marketing strategies. It is his job to ensure that the company’s message is clear in the different stages of all marketing efforts. Although he works independently for most of the day, he often has meetings with the marketing specialist and myself to discuss our progress, tasks, and how we can help him attain marketing objectives.
I usually arrive to the office about 20 minutes before 9:00 AM to make coffee, prepare my agenda, and to get checked in. I spend a few minutes thinking of my goals and questions I would like to ask my supervisor for the day. I then start working on my tasks, which are discussed and set in my meetings with my supervisor. So far, I have spent plenty of time trying to increase social media engagement for the company. Creating an infographic on online gambling has been my most significant task in the first two weeks. It took about four days to gather all of the data, get it edited and approved, and to finally create it. This infographic is the first out of six that I will have to make, and they will all be posted on our social media channels in hopes of encouraging more people to visit the website and subscribe to the newsletter. I have also compiled a list of over 100 blockchain influencers and their social media links onto a spreadsheet. This list will be used to engage with their posts so that we can spread the word about the company. After only two days of engaging with influencers on LinkedIn, I was able to help the company gain about 80 connections on their account. Since I will be attending the World Gaming Executive Summit in Barcelona in a few weeks, I have been dedicating some time to researching my company and the iGaming industry in preparation for the event. I also helped count inventory for the marketing materials that we will be bringing to the summit.
Something that has surprised me is that my co-workers are constantly allowing me try local food at work. Almost every day, they either bring me some fruits to my desk or invite me to the eating area of the office for a snack. I am not familiar with most of the fruits they bring, so I have the opportunity of trying something new every day. So far, I have tried rambutan, mangosteen, longan, guava, and a plethora of other fruits that are not as prevalent in the U.S. I was definitely not expecting for everyone to be this this kind and hospitable in the workplace.
My supervisor’s name is Long Dang, and his official job
title is Investment Director. Since he works from Hanoi, I do not have a clear
view of his day-to-day schedule, but I assume that he participates in client
meetings with startups seeking capital and evaluates presented market research
to influence investment decisions made by the portfolio managers. Moreover, his
personality is unique because although he gives blunt and straightforward
feedback, he tries to be approachable and friendly. Additionally, he is
extremely knowledgeable and well-versed about his work, and he tries to pass his
knowledge to me whenever possible.
While I work on my projects largely independently, I still
try to collaborate with the other intern, Tara, and the financial manager of
the Ho Chi Minh City office, Hai. While I do wish my team was a bit larger, I
believe I am still growing as a result of taking on more responsibility to
complete full projects. The scope of my internship role is parallel to that of
an entry level investment analyst. More specifically, I am expected to assist
the investment team in sourcing and collecting sector-related qualitative
research content, managing research interviews when needed, collecting and
analyzing research data in excel-based platforms, report writing, proofreading,
and other related research activities.
An interesting personal experience I had in Ho Chi Minh City that surprised me was that a group of tour guides from the company that gave us tours during our first week in Vietnam invited some friends and I to play a game of soccer. It was quite surprising because these tour guides had never seen us in person prior to us coming to play with them. Even more surprising was that they rented the whole field so that they could play against us. While they were initially winning, our American team emerged victorious in the end. Instead of being upset, the Vietnamese tour guides showed great sportsmanship and even invited us to try a Vietnamese delicacy afterwards: duck eggs. This group of Vietnamese tour guides showed us their favorite nearby road stall to grab the food, and we all ate together in good spirit. At the end of our encounter, they paid for our meal and invited us to play again during our stay in Vietnam; this was my first true taste of Vietnamese hospitality and the openness of their culture.
My supervisor at my internship
was named Toan, a small-statured but intelligent man who also happened to be
the Managing Director at Impact Vietnam. He had also founded the boutique
investment bank in early 2014 and built his clientele to nearly five hundred
million dollars in successful deals since its establishment. Aside from
assigning my coworker and I tasks on deals, Toan steers the direction of the
business given his ownership status; his day-to-day work often includes
securing mandates from new clients who are looking to sell a percentage of their
business, communicating with prospective buyers and foreign investors who are
interested in stake in our current clients, or asking about possible investment
entries into specific industries that they can possibly secure, and visiting
the business sites of current clients to discuss their deals or to gather more
information for corporate pitch decks or financial models.
Toan has been inviting and
encouraging to myself and my coworker and has ventured well beyond the
traditional expectations for a business internship. Despite not giving the most
explicit instructions at first, he has given us the freedom and flexibility to
be original in the work, and more specifically the company pitch decks, that we
do for our client deals, allowing us to express the depths of our creativity
and aid Impact Vietnam not only on their deals, but setting a standard for
future corporate presentations beyond our time at the firm. Given its small
size, there are no departments within the company, but because the core team
works in the same office space, communication is at a productive high and we
are friendly with each other.
Beyond assembling pitch decks,
investment teasers, and financial models and comparables, Toan has emboldened
us to accompany him on his client meetings. I have gotten to travel to grocery
stores and factories, which have provided a tangibility to the work that I do
for Impact Vietnam. For instance, working on a pitch deck for the largest
seafood manufacturer in southeast Asia on Monday and then visiting the factory
on Wednesday to personally meet with and interview the company CEO for inside
information on his expansion plans that I get to relay to prospective investors
through presentations have been unimaginable experiences. Having a multitude of
opportunities to interact with C-suite Executives, Presidents, and Chairmen of
companies are experiences that create a personable dimension to my work that is
unparalleled anywhere in the Investment Banking industry for an intern.
Aside from working on the weekdays and traveling the region on weekends, I have had interesting experiences during my lunch breaks in Ho Chi Minh City. Over the past few weeks, I have been to many different Vietnamese restaurants, and not a single one to date has provided me with a napkin during a meal yet; to be honest I have asked for one on multiple occasions and nobody even seems to know what they are. As a somewhat messy eater this has proven to be quite frustrating, as I have to be careful not to stain my dress shirts for work. For the time being, paying 5000 dong (approximately 25 cents) for wet wipes at restaurants will have to suffice. Hopefully me and my dress shirts will survive the next 5 weeks; only time will tell.
Mae
Catibog is the Research Manager for Axis Research Group for the last year. She
is originally from the Philippines and recently moved to Vietnam three years
ago, where she worked in a start-up digital marketing firm. She finds that the
experiences at Axis will be very beneficial for professional development due to
the various projects that she works on and the wide array of clients. Since she
is one of the few employees that speak English, she is in charge of Social
Research, Scientific Research, Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Research, Qualitative
Research, and Digital Technology Solutions. She is a very impressive young
woman, but I’m so grateful to have her as my supervisor. Mae is the person that
lights up the room with her smile and killer sense of humor regardless of the
stressful setting the office can become. Aside from her outgoing and laid back
personality, she listens to us, the interns, and provides us with opportunities
for our professional growth. This also is apparent in her personal life as she
resists the norms placed on her based on her culture and follows her dreams
even when most people won’t.
As
for my role with an internship with Axis, I am a Research and Technology
Assistant. My responsibilities include assisting our Research department with
brainstorming project for potential clients as well as technology development
by adding to the company website. Some of the projects I work on are app
developments, feature and benefits analysis, and video editing. My favorite
part of the day is the small moments throughout the day where everyone in the
office has conversations, where we can learn about everyone outside of their
responsibilities, this especially occurs during lunch.
As much as Vietnam is an enriching culture, the only thing I have been surprised by is how welcoming and friendly Vietnamese people are to Americans. Whether it’s my coworkers showing me around and recommending things to do, or when strangers make an effort to communicate with me even though I have limited knowledge of their language. Considering all the history between our countries, I am always slightly taken back that still are very open to us. Otherwise, Vietnam is a beautiful country with beautiful people, where the only issue I run into is that I cannot read the signs. Even if you’re lost, it’s still an adventure.
Last
week I mentioned that although I really liked the work I got at my internship,
it had been really hard to acclimate and talk to my coworkers. This week,
however, I made it my mission to speak to as many people as possible and it was
an adventure. My boss and my co-workers are very friendly, and I have had lunch
with them every day since.
My supervisor is Ms. Winnie Lam, the Chief Operating Officer of Colliers International. As the COO, she oversees the company’s business operations and reports to the CEO. Some of her responsibilities are overseeing marketing initiatives and implementing better business practices, delegating responsibilities to ensure staff members grow as capable participants, and employing various initiatives to coach employees to optimize their capabilities. Her day-to-day schedule is different depending on what the company needs but she always has at least one meeting with a department.
As a marketing intern, my role is to assist the marketing team. I work 8:30am to 5:30pm and on the daily, I sit at my desk, do research, create tables on excel and attend meetings. Last week my job was to perform a competitor analysis and make a comparable of the social media posts.
This week, I received two more projects, one is to come up with a plan to revive the residential blogs on the ColliersHome website and the other is to start the research for the competitor shopping assignment. For those who may not know, real estate competitor shopping is a task where an individual searches for targets, sets up a shopping identity and builds a shopping list in order to make a market analysis, price analysis, and service analysis.
Outside of work, an interesting personal experience I had in HCMC is the fact that I got to attend the MIB movie premiere. My friend Minh Thy got the tickets to go to the event from her internship and she asked me to join her. The movie was great but what surprised me was the fact that people really didn’t seem to mind that there where famous people all around. Moreover, the dress code was more casual than back in the states and the famous people were more approachable.
In the short time I have been working at Impact Vietnam, I
have become more familiar with my coworkers and the day to day operations of
the company. My supervisor, Mr. Toan, is the Founder and Managing Director of
Impact Vietnam. He is responsible for new business development, operations,
strategic partnerships, and implementation. Mr. Toan has had over 15 years of
experience in numerous sectors, and prior to founding Impact Vietnam he was the
Managing Director of a $15 million-dollar fund. Mr. Toan typically operates
from the Hanoi office, but has been in Ho Chi Minh City for two weeks to
introduce me to the team. I am working in a team of five members dedicated to
the facilitation of investment transactions from private equity investors. The
team is composed of Mr. Toan, the Founder and Managing Director; Mr. Ninh, the
Manager of the Ho Chi Minh City office; Mr. Tuan, the Investment Analyst; Cole
McNally, an Investment Analyst Intern; and myself, an Investment Analyst
Intern. Mr. Ninh is responsible for client relationships, deal sourcing, and
deal management. Mr. Tuan works on gathering equity research, preparing
investment presentations, and preparing financial models of private companies
for investors.
Cole and I are involved in sharing the responsibilities of
Mr. Tuan, and in addition have participated in client meetings, calls, and
facility tours. So far, I have been involved in four different investment
deals, where I have prepared investment presentations and began working on the
financial modeling for the transactions. Each of the deals are different in
their own way, and with each I develop a better understanding of the commercial
world and the interconnections of all the components within it. Last week I was
given the opportunity to attend two client meets, where I was able to put my
work into perspective and establish an intimate connection between the
financials of a company and the people within it. In addition to the client
meetings, I was invited to tour a new client’s manufacturing facility to gather
information for an investment presentation. I’m very grateful for the
invitation to accompany my team, and I feel like in attending I was able to
develop a better understanding of how to analyze a company and gather information
that could sometimes be overlooked.
Outside of work I have been actively exploring new and exciting spots in the Ho Chi Minh City area. On Wednesday, June 14, a couple of friends and I decided to go eat dinner together in a side of town that we’ve often overlooked. After a 15-minute walk down a dark and withered road, to our surprise we stumbled across a vibrantly colored cottage styled house, decorated with flowers and vines in every color weaving together the magnificent lodge. Inside of the beautifully decorated home is a French café littered with flowers hanging from the ceiling, atop the tables, and growing across the walls. Sprinkled between the flowers are unique repurposed items creating a lively artistic ambiance. Located on a baron street surrounded by empty lots and run-down shops, this beautiful café is truly a hidden gem worth visiting.
Robert, our boss at Elefos, is quite the guy. He’s the CEO
and founder of the startup we’re currently working at, Parth Joint Stock
Company (or Elefos, as our flagship product is called), and he definitely has
the academic background to back up his title. Despite being born in Vietnam,
most of his life was spent in Australia – which is where he got both his
bachelor’s in computer science and his accent. After this, he attended NYU’s
Stern School of Business, which is where he received a Master’s in Finance. He
is a seasoned blockchain industry veteran, acting as an advisor at multiple
Australian summits on the topic and having participated in the industry since
its conception. Personality-wise, Robert is a very serious but polite
individual. Jokes are uncommon, and when he does laugh it feels artificial, but
he carries this dignified air that makes him easy to trust and listen to. He is
very focused at work most of the time, so we don’t really interface with him
outside of pre-scheduled feedback meetings and presentations that we post on
Google Calendar and invite him to. Outside from those, he leaves us to our own
devices – it’s entirely up to us to do whatever we feel the company needs at a
particular time.
So what are those tasks? Our introduction to the office was
punctuated with the statement that the company was just beginning to pivot to a
new industry, and our only task was figuring out where we wanted to fit into
this process. We were given several resources and textbooks to study, and soon,
we were all waist-deep in research – learning about the industry, conducting
competitor analyses, looking up conferences to attend… The lack of direction
forced us to learn more about what kind of climate we were working in, and
figure out exactly what Elefos was working with, to better understand what
options were available to us. When we gave our first ever presentation, designed
to answer a seemingly simple question of Robert’s, he did something we didn’t
expect: he asked follow-up questions. Many of them, most of them rather
difficult and specific. No fact went unchecked, every finding was followed with
a request for the source and further detail, and when we’d use a technical term
we were only half-familiar with, he would probe us for a definition. It was a
death march of a presentation, us few interns struggling to maintain our
posture as Robert rained down upon us with arrows of inquisition. After finally
reaching the final slide, Robert told us to carry on with our studies and
returned to his desk. There was a cloud of defeat hanging over us the rest of
that afternoon, but the next day we came back stronger. We pried deeper, read
through every source we could find, drilled ourselves on every possible
question – calling ourselves industry experts would be a stretch, but we are
now definitely approaching fluency in describing industry concepts and fleshing
out our arguments and explanations with technical reasoning. Robert must’ve
recognized this, because immediately after, the floor was opened. The previous
week was spent answering more specific questions to aid in the company’s pivot,
trying to prove a hypothesis that the success of the pivot is contingent upon.
We’re contributing to the redesign and authoring of many company resources,
including the website and white-paper. I also recently proposed the creation of
a LinkedIn for the company and am now to spearhead the creation of that. It’s
still early on in our internship, so I look forward to our product’s
development being launched – and with that, many more opportunities being
opened.
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting Da Nang. Most of our class went there and traveled on a tight schedule in a race to see everything there and in Hoi An before our return on Sunday night, but I opted instead to travel with a smaller group and take things slowly. Saturday was spent mostly on the beautiful white shores of Da Nang, and while the others were attempting a tan or sleeping, I decided it was the perfect time to revisit the list of things I wanted to accomplish/learn while in Vietnam. It was then that I decided I was going to learn how to cartwheel, right there and then. I got off to a rough start, and within minutes, I was starting to look more sand than human. That’s when I noticed a bit of an audience began to form: some of the locals were cheering and reacting to my failed or slightly-more-successful attempts, and encouraging me to keep at it. A few began cartwheeling alongside me, providing feedback and walking me through the steps. Eventually, some valuable advice regarding my footing carried me to the end of my motion – cartwheel accomplished. Next up was a front-flip, but I was exhausted and physically beat so I needed to call it quits there. The locals who proved so helpful came and shook hands, told me about some of the things I absolutely needed to see while I was in Da Nang, and one of them even introduced me to his whole family. It was a special, random encounter, and it further cemented my love for the people here. People in Vietnam are so friendly, sympathetic, approachable, and eager to help. I’m glad that of all the places I could’ve picked up that useless skill, it was that particular beach in Vietnam.
UF in Vietnam Internship 