This summer, students from the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics discovered new avenues for professional preparation and practical hands-on experience. Lerner College students pursued an array of internships, externships and other professional development opportunities. From MBA scholars to undergraduates entering their second year at UD, students across a spectrum of Lerner programs shared their experiences accomplishing an assortment of projects.
Our “My Summer Internship” series highlights these unique experiences, showcasing how students translated classroom knowledge into real-world success.
Brian Pan, Class of 2027, finance and management information systems double major, spent his summer as an investor relations intern at Exelon.
Lerner: How did you find out about this internship? Why did you pursue it?
Pan: I was a returning intern this past summer, but first learned about careers at Exelon and opportunities in the power/utilities space at the UD Career Fair. I stopped by a table with folks from Delmarva Power, an Exelon Operating Company (OpCo). I was a freshman at the time and eager to take on anything that came my way, so I applied and was delighted to spend a summer working for Atlantic City Electric, another Exelon OpCo. During my first summer, I genuinely found a passion for the industry, which is being shaken up by soaring AI-driven demand for power. During those ten weeks, I sprinkled in many “coffee chats” with other professionals in finance teams and corporate functions throughout my day-to-day responsibilities, wanting to learn more about the business. Around the fall of last school year, I was delighted to hear from one of them who mentioned that our conversation had left a lasting impression. She eventually offered me a role on the Investor Relations team out at their Chicago HQ. That phone call out of the blue was a true testament to me that networking and genuine relationship-building pay dividends, just like being a shareholder and investing in the company (no pun intended)!
Lerner: What was the most exciting task or project that you completed?
Pan: I worked on the Investor Relations (IR) team, a small but mighty team of four that bridges the gap between a publicly traded company’s management team and the broader investment community. I spent a lot of time on calls with Wall Street sell-side analysts and institutional investors to help message the company’s story and growth outlook, and I also supported our Q3 earnings call. One of the most exciting projects I spearheaded was building an internal AI agent trained on years of investor presentations and materials. This ultimately enabled the IR and finance teams to understand how past situations or scenarios were messaged in minutes, instead of spending tedious hours digging through old files.
Lerner: What did you learn from the internship that you think you wouldn’t have learned elsewhere?
Pan: I felt fortunate to work with my manager and my Director, who were both thoughtful and intentional about investing in my growth this summer. One thing my Director really instilled in me is the importance of “unspoken rules.” I quickly learned that technical skills are important and have their place, but in a fast-moving environment like IR, where I had much exposure to our senior executive management like the CEO, CFO, and COO, the unwritten rules of business in how I managed expectations, built trust, mirrored communication, fostered visibility, navigated ambiguity, etc., are truly what lead to success!
Lerner: What is an example of a time where you were able to apply what you’ve learned at Lerner to your role?
Pan: Much of my day-to-day involved supporting our team’s work streams, including shareholder analysis of who is buying and selling the stock, updating investor materials for roadshows and meetings with prospective new investors, creating investor decks for the company’s quarterly earnings report, and drafting the annual investor sustainability report. Unlike much of my academic coursework, which has been fairly analytical and quantitative, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to tell the story and message behind the data and figures other finance teams produced. One week in mid-July, I had earnings storyboarding meetings literally every other day with my team and the company CFO. HOSP230 Executive Presentations, taught by Polly Weir, was exceptionally beneficial in molding my confidence with public speaking. Through one-on-one time with her during office hours, I also learned frameworks for communicating with high-level senior executives and influential stakeholders, framing my point concisely before they often interrupted with questions and follow-ups. In preparing for those meetings, BUAD345 Decision Analytics and Visualization and MISY331 Machine Learning for Business were also invaluable, teaching me how to leverage Python and quickly comb through massive data warehouses to gather the supporting data I needed to back my recommendations.
Lerner: Did you face any challenges during your internship? If so, what was the issue and how did you overcome it?
Pan: I didn’t face any major professional challenges, but it was quite an adjustment living in a bustling city and being away from family and friends for an extended period, especially since I have spent my whole life in suburban Delaware. I was fortunate to have many fellow interns and coworkers who were Chicago natives, which eased the unfamiliarity and helped me build a social circle I could lean on.
Lerner: What are your career plans, and how do you think the internship will push you closer to your professional goals?
Pan: Work in infrastructure or real estate finance which could encompass staying in the power/utilities space or broadening. While I became familiar with the business from a high-level reading of stats and figures all day, I appreciated really getting to understand the power/utilities industry from a peers standpoint so this internship really helped me understand all the different players from power producers to investor-owned transmission and distribution utilities and even battery storage operators.