SHARON, Pa. — Penn State Shenango senior Alex Davis, a business marketing and management major, is one of the inaugural interns at the Shenango LaunchBox powered by the Greater Sharon Community during the spring 2024 semester.
Alex discusses his experience at the LaunchBox, as well as lessons learned, and how his Penn State Shenango classes helped prepare him for success in this role.
Begin Q&A:
Q: What are your roles at the LaunchBox, and what are some of the projects you're involved with?
A: I would say my primary role at LaunchBox is to reach out to clients who contact us and set up a meeting with them. I have also done database clean up through our CRM HubSpot, and sit in on a lot of meetings and take in as much information as possible. I have also presented what we do at LaunchBox to an Invent Penn State panel as well as High School students at Slippery Rock.
Q: What classroom experiences at Shenango have prepared you for your roles at the LaunchBox?
A: I am currently taking a class about new venture creation which has clued me in on a lot of different terms that we use at LaunchBox. It has also helped me to gain perspective on what many of these start-ups must do and will have to go through. The public speaking course also helped with presenting what we do to others.
Q: While your internship is still ongoing for this semester, what are the key lessons you’ve learned so far during your internship experience?
A: One of the lessons I have learned at LaunchBox is to always take a meeting and to always try and network with others. We have seen plenty of entrepreneurs come through who had their meeting with us, and because of it we set them up with connections they would have never had.
Q: How can you apply your real-world LaunchBox experiences to your remaining classes at Shenango?
A: With my new venture creation class, I have already been crossing over what I learned here, and what I have learned from the class to my internship. It is also useful for any business major to hear from and see what businesses go through, it gives you an in-person perspective into what your studies are related to.
Q: What career(s) are you interested in after graduation, and has your internship experience helped you towards reaching those goals?
A: After I graduate, I have an internship set up with First National Bank in their risk management department. Interestingly, in the search process to find this internship I set myself up with the First National Bank internship in the process. My current internship with LaunchBox has changed my perspective on how I will go about business in my future jobs. If I never had this internship I would not have tried as hard to network because I would not have seen the use. But, now I do.
