This year, Uplight hosted its first-ever “Intern showcase” to spotlight the 2023 summer interns’ projects and accomplishments. Each intern showcased their work in one to three slides, speaking for about five minutes on their projects, experiences, and key takeaways from their summer at Uplight.  The 16 Interns worked across all six pillars at Uplight– Engineering, Delivery and Operations, Market Innovation, Security and IT, Product, and Legal– so the group’s impact was large in size and scope. 

During their presentations, interns spoke about their projects and demonstrated their contributions to long-term company goals and initiatives. Interns built out internal tools – intranet pages, efficiency dashboards, security measures, data pipeline, the “Thermoboard”, and more – to improve company and product operations. They also worked on client-facing deliverables, such as Orchestrated Energy and Marketplace products, customer-facing messaging, marketing assets, and more. Interns described areas of growth and learning from these experiences– common themes included experience with new software tools, industry knowledge, networking opportunities, and communication skills. 

Through these presentations, it became clear that interns went above and beyond expectations to help Uplight improve processes. David Osei-Tutu, the Technical Solutions intern this summer, spoke to his impact:  “In my data analysis investigation, I explored potential areas of growth for my team… I proposed some data-driven solutions to improve efficiency, which have the potential of saving the team up to 50 working hours over the span of 5 months.” 

Interns also spoke to their experience working within their teams. Paula Ulerio, a Product Design intern, shared, “One crucial aspect of my experience has been working with such an amazing and supportive team–everyone just roots for one another. It’s been refreshing to be a part of, and I have felt so welcome throughout my time here.” 

Each intern took time to express their gratitude to their team – and during the meeting, Uplighters thanked and appreciated each intern in the Zoom comments.  It’s certainly a bittersweet goodbye (or, see you later) for the interns and their teams!