The Intern Diaries (Week 4): Butterfly in the Sky, You Can Go Twice as Hightower

Four-tunately, we crossed the finish line for week four, just in time for the Fourth of July weekend – say that four times fast! The interns had a jam-packed week of being treated like royalty. You heard it here first: The only coffee they’re making is for themselves.

With three brown bag lunches and a sweet new Learning Series presentation under their belts, one could argue the interns are spending an average of $0 a week on mid-day meals in the office. It sounds like a great reward for surviving rush hour (not the movie).

Keep reading to see what hijinks the interns got into this week!

Reading Rainbow with Scott Holsopple

• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules in Work and in Life by Francesca Gino
• Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It) by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
• The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
• The Rose Code by Kate Quinn
• Battle Tested! Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders by Jeffrey D. McCausland and Tom Vossler
• Decisions and Dissents of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, edited by Corey Brettschneider

Now Talk It Out

Internship Coordinator Tegan Dry put together an informative presentation to help the interns prepare for their final presentation in Week 10 of the program. She notes, “We covered effective public speaking, and presenting tactics and habits, as well as potential pitfalls to avoid. They learned some mind-blowing facts, like that your body language communicates more than the words you say – how crazy is that! After this learning series, the interns are ready to blow the ELTs [Executive Leadership Team] away!” If The Little Mermaid didn’t teach you enough about body language, I’m sure this class would really fill in the gaps.

You truly do not have to take my word for it because our new Pull Quotes Champion Sarah Welch has more to add, saying, “I loved our learning series this week about presenting, Tegan did a great job giving us an example of how to give a presentation and got us excited about our final presentations at the end of the summer!” A+ for Confidence!

If You Give an Intern a Project…

Hearing from Hightower leaders is great, but it’s also valuable to learn by doing. Otherwise, what did we make all those volcanos for in grade school? We checked in with some of the interns to see what they’re actually working on outside of all these dazzling presentations and training sessions. Here’s what they had to say:

“I’ve been researching how Hightower can offer Direct Indexing services to its clients and advisor businesses. It is a popular topic right now in the investing space, so it will be interesting to see what I find and what opportunities these new services may offer.” – Solutions Research Intern Jake Cizmarik

“I am working on coding a Python program to match account names of recently acquired firms with their appropriate agreement contract pdfs so we can upload them all at once rather than individually.” –Operations Intern Anthony Krcik

“It was so fun to start sorting and organizing HR covid mail from 2020; I really feel like I’m making a difference here at Hightower.” – 3/3 on Quotes Sarah Welch

We’re loving these fun, interesting projects that truly add so much value to the Hightower and the services we provide to financial advisors. Thank you for all the work that you do, team. Cookies for all!

Marketing Flies the W

Last, but not least, is Marketing summer outing! The team took marketing interns Emily Christopher and Cecelia Miskowski to Wrigley field for a Cubs Game. Enjoying the glorious summer weather from a rooftop overlooking the field, the interns got to spend some time outside the office with their favorite co-worker (me) and all the peanuts and crackerjacks they could ask for. Says Emily Christopher, “The cubs game with the marketing team was really fun and it was great to meet so many team members in person, finally! It was fun to hang outside of the office and get to know all these people better. And as a bonus, the Cubs brought home a W!” Go Cubs, Go!

Week four is out the door! Come back later to see what the interns are circling back to and following up on.