MLDP Week 5: Group Work Session and Internships Panel

Read a student's account of our most recent session in our Management Leadership and Development program below. For more information, about MLDP, click here.

Nikki Sachdeva '15 sketches a logo for her group's project proposal video

The completion of Week 5 signals MLDP's shift into high gear as students respond to the “Call for Proposals” announced earlier in the term.  Within the program, MLDP is providing participants with an opportunity to implement a small group project and learn by applying the concepts covered in MLDP through concrete experience.  Each small group within MLDP will be formulating a project idea related to management, leadership, or public policy to enact sometime within the next year.  What’s more is that, as a part of the Call for Proposals, all small groups in MLDP are engaged in a contest of ideas – each “pitch” will be made on Rocky’s YouTube channel for public viewing and voting by the number of “likes” each video receives.  The idea that gains the most traction by the highest number of likes is eligible to win a $500 award from the Rockefeller Center to help to put their idea into practice.

Observing groups working together has been a lot of fun.  As a recent participant of MLDP (Winter 2012) and a Rockefeller Center Student Program Assistant this term, I’ve enjoyed the sight of groups of students who may have barely known each at the beginning of the term come together and work on their proposal.  During the session, I watched students become excited about the numerous possibilities so much that one group started to begin recording their video pitch.    

In addition to working on their group projects this week, MLDP was joined by Liz King ’13, Lauryn Overton ’13, Joshua Lee ’13, and James Herring ’14.  These students completed MLDP in recent terms and went to perform internships in the field of public policy which were supported by the Rockefeller Center.  During this panel discussion, these students talked about their experiences and how the lessons they learned from MLDP made them much more prepared to take advantage of their internship experiences.  Current MLDP participants asked numerous questions about how to land internships related to their respective interests, and building a network of peers within the current participants in MLDP and other participants in MLDP who went on to perform internships emerged as an important resource.  This network is one of many ways to help to generate ideas, bounce questions off of one another, and find future opportunities.

-- Joshua Schiefelbein ‘14
Rockefeller Center Student Program Assistant