Ashley Jiin Kim, '20, Intern at CJ Freshway, Summer 2019

This summer, I worked as the Business Strategy Intern at CJ Freshway, a food distribution company within CJ Corporation. The Business Strategy team is an in-house consulting engine for CJ Freshway, analyzing current business problems that the company faces or possibilities of growth for the company, then creating short to long-term goals for the company accordingly based on market and industry research, data analysis, and strategic frameworks.

Throughout the summer, I took on a project concerning the possibility of a new business channel, which was to be a part of a new company-wide strategy report that the team was working to release soon. In the first week of the internship, I learned about the food distribution industry as a whole, how food distribution businesses make profit, and the differences between the US, Chinese and Korean food distribution market. In the second week, I got to know the company and its current strategies, and started conducting relevant research to begin my project. After the first two weeks, the pace of my internship sped up vastly, as I started working on deliverables. I also prepared for the mid-term and final presentations, both of which happened in front of multiple C-suite members, all Business Strategy team members, and 3 HR leaders.

I felt that I was challenged throughout my internship with the tasks that I was given, both in its content – it was about subjects I did not learn about before – and the technical skills that it required of me – utilizing business frameworks with the data at hand, conducting data analysis and synthesis, and performing exhaustive primary and secondary research. I also learned about an industry that was wholly unfamiliar to me at the start of my internship; by the end of the summer, I could summarize the most important qualities of food distributions markets and companies in the US, China and Korea within minutes. In essence, the experience was akin to experiencing a single consulting project, though I did not get to see through the execution of the solution I helped build: in a fast-paced 8 weeks, I learned about the industry, the company, and came up with a relevant solution designed to facilitate company growth.

Besides the professional experience I gained, I particularly enjoyed the relationships that I made with co-workers during my time at CJ Freshway. Everyone – both in and outside my team- was willing to go on coffee-chats with me, giving me mentorship, answering questions about tasks, or just making sure that I was adjusting well. Lastly, my HR recruiter at CJ Freshway was particularly phenomenal; she made sure that I established goals of what I wished to gain from the internship, and how I planned to contribute to the team in conversation with my mentor at the beginning of the internship, then checked on me consistently to make sure that those goals were being accomplished. She also made sure that I was adjusting culturally, and gave me a lot of guidance in terms of navigating Korean corporate life. I truly believe this internship couldn’t have been as fruitful as it was without her contribution.