My name is Collin Baker, and my Beyond the Classroom Experience took me to Atlanta, Georgia for a ten week long internship. As a Management Information Systems major in the College of Business, an internship relevant to information systems, which aligns perfectly with finding a BtC Experience related to my theme of Technology and Society.

I spent the summer as a Digital Assurance and Transparency Intern with PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLC (PwC). The position essentially boils down to IT audit. My client was a financial technology company that acts as an intermediary between financial institutions and advertisers to place ads into banking apps. Basically, if you bank through most major companies like Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and others, the coupons you find in your bank’s app were placed there not by the bank, but my client. My job involved making sure that all of the controls the company had in place covering financial information and data security were operating the way they ought to, and that they properly protected and guaranteed the accuracy of all of the information the company handles. This meant gathering evidence, analyzing reports, and talking to people working for the client (data engineers, compliance managers, even the Chief Information Security Officer) to make sure I properly understood the systems they had in place and could confirm they were appropriate.

Doing this gave me an incredible understanding of the use of information systems in business to a degree that my major could never provide. The pervasiveness of technology in all aspects of life, including business, is well known, but few people truly understand how essential it is to the proper operation of a company. Even more critically, the extent of attention paid to controls and security measures is far more substantial than I thought. Everything is taken into account, to the point that what we considered “data security” controls included not only firewalls, VPNs, and password requirements, but organization charts, succession plans, and vendor contracts. The value this opportunity added to my understanding of the field I intend to work in, as well as my general understanding of technology as it’s used in business, can not be understated.

The summer wasn’t just about work, of course. I had a fantastic team to spend my time with, and each day, whether in the office, at the client site, or at a bar for happy hour, was fantastic. Throughout the summer, we did everything from minigolf to Beat the Bomb (basically a bunch of minigames with everything from memory challenges to dodging lasers) and it was a great way to get to know my associates, managers, and even firm partners (all on the company’s budget, of course).

This was a great experience, and I am excited to start my full-time position with the company after graduating in the fall.