Megan Maciulski
Author: Megan Maciulski | Majors: Marketing and Management
My name is Megan Maciulski and I am from Shreveport, Louisiana. I am a senior graduating Cum Laude with majors in Marketing and Management and a Spanish minor. One of my proudest accomplishments of undergrad was receiving a year-round internship with a Fortune 500 company. Since June 2022, I have been a Customer Development intern for Colgate-Palmolive on the Walmart account.
By having the home office of the largest retailer in the world less than thirty miles north of the University of Arkansas, opportunities for students in our area are unmatched to any other in the region. Students at the University of Arkansas and the Walton College in particular have the unique opportunity to interact with Fortune 500 companies that have established offices in Northwest Arkansas to support Walmart. There are approximately 1400 vendors and 400 Fortune 500 companies right in our backyard. These companies, their suppliers, and others provide students with summer internships, part time employment during the regular semesters, and job opportunities in both NWA and throughout the world after graduation. Many of these companies attend both of Walton’s career fairs in the fall and spring semesters to recruit our students. As a junior attending the career fair with a summer internship in mind, I did my homework for the Fall 2021 career fair and came prepared.
I was blessed with an offer to work at Colgate-Palmolive for a whole year as a Customer Development Intern on the Home Care team for the Walmart account. I was attracted to Colgate because of their company culture and highly sought after year-round internship. Four other interns and I started to work full time in the office in June. In accordance with Colgate’s work-life balance initiative, we worked from home on Mondays and Fridays and worked in the office from 8-5 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. At the beginning of the summer, we learned about Colgate’s company including the brands it owns and as well as its corporate goals and values. After that, we learned how to complete weekly reporting tasks to help support our designated teams. The more we learned and as weeks passed on, the more projects we were trusted with. We worked individually on our teams and specific brands and then were also given group projects to work on together as fellow interns.
Managing my time during the semester while also working part-time for Colgate was difficult at first but looking back, I really enjoyed everything that I learned from that experience. It was enjoyable and interesting to live a double life, per say. I logged on to work in the morning and completed weekly reporting for my team that would use this information to talk to the Walmart buyer or corporate leaders in the company, so I knew that my work made an impact. After that, I would attend class and learn about marketing and management tactics and have a chance to make connections between the real world and academics. Many professors in Walton bring in field experts to complete hands-on projects with students to drive home the concept of putting technical skills to the test, that does not require a written exam. Working in the real world and returning to class was a unique experience for which I am eternally grateful.
If you have the opportunity to work as an intern for a company during college, do it. It is a fantastic experience to be exposed to the real world and learn more about the world of business as well as your own passions and interests. Exposure to the real world before you are actually in it makes a huge difference for your career and your comfort level with professionalism and corporate America. Thanks to my years in Walton Honors as well as internship and my experiences in it throughout the past year, I am heading into my full-time job with great confidence in my abilities and I am excited for what the future of post-grad holds.