Tomorrow's Explorers: The Chronicles of United Therapeutics Corporation’s 2024 Intern Cohort (original) (raw)

People and Culture

Sep 10, 2024

10 Min Read

“The most effective way to do it, is to do it.”

Amelia Earhart

Aviation pioneer

Educational institutions are charged with helping prepare students for their careers. Yet, we know that experiential learning, such as those provided by internships, is one of the most effective and beneficial ways of teaching a subject. Internships can help reinforce some concepts students learn in the classroom while helping them understand what it takes to get something done in the real world. Great internships can open students’ eyes to new roles, new concepts, and new ways of thinking. The combination of theoretical and practical experience students get from academic coursework and internships can better prepare them to contribute meaningfully toward some larger purpose through their careers. And maybe, just maybe, an internship will provide just enough of a spark within a student to illuminate their path forward toward some breakthrough innovation in the future. And possibly become a Unitherian one day as well.

Our internship program aligns with the 70/20/10 learning model we use at United Therapeutics (UT), which holds that individuals gain 70 percent of their knowledge from on-the-job experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others such as through mentoring, and 10 percent from formal educational events. We recently bid adieu to our 2024 summer intern cohort of 41 students from various schools and disciplines who joined us to provide support to 27 UT functions ranging from government affairs to organ manufacturing and everything in between.

This story highlights the experiences of several of our interns who worked with UT managers and leaders between May and August. We also share more details about a pilot initiative called Student-Led Exploration and Development (SLED), through which UT engaged undergraduate and graduate students from American University to unleash ideas for future development.

We are grateful for each student who shared their time and talents with UT this summer and applaud their willingness to learn and grow alongside their managers. We are also grateful for all their managers who generously took the time to share what we do at UT and to offer career and life advice to these students. We look forward to watching them rise to the challenges and opportunities the future holds.

UT Interns at work and play

UT’S INTERNSHIP PROGRAM

Biotechnology is creative work. We need those who think differently to work together to find better solutions for our patients—whether in positions that directly support patient outcomes or in functions that enable our patient-centric work—and we want to find those people wherever they are today, retain those who have joined us to solve the problems we face now, and nurture those future leaders who will build on these efforts to create the solutions of tomorrow.

UT has long drawn its talent from those who join us in our work for a short period of time—either as interns, co-ops, or through other university programs. In fact, more than 40 current Unitherians started their journey to UT as interns, co-ops, or university fellows. The UT Talent Acquisition Team (TA) has been working hard since 2022 to evolve our internship program into a strategic initiative that is aligned with our goals to cultivate diverse talent for potential future roles.

Inclusive Excellence

UT seeks to find—and help develop—those unique, smart, and passionate people who will join us in our purpose to create a brighter future for patients. Our 2024 summer intern cohort reflects excellence in diversity.

58%|55%

of our summer interns identified as racial or ethnic minorities | identified as women

Among recent improvements, the TA team built a resource repository for managers and interns to make the orientation and onboarding process both more comprehensive and inclusive. Professional development opportunities for the students included a weekly speaker series with departmental leaders to expose students to all aspects of UT’s business. The program also provided tours of our state-of-the-art facilities to help students understand the form and function of our operations, and all students were granted access to the robust LinkedIn Learning platform to supplement other career development resources. In addition, the Talent Development team at UT curated specialized learning paths for the interns, providing them with targeted development opportunities to support both their internship program objectives as well as future career objectives. Finally, interns are required to deliver a presentation at the end of their projects to practice their presentation skills, share their knowledge, and secure feedback from peers and UT professionals to help them learn and grow.

The team also recognized that students and their families have different financial means. This is why UT added a $3,500 housing/transportation stipend—on top of competitive base hourly rates—to make sure these financial costs were not a barrier to enabling qualified applicants to say “yes” to an internship opportunity with us.

2024 UT Pride Party at our Research Triangle Park, N.C. campus

The combination of these efforts resulted in a diverse group of Seasonal Support Associates, interns, and advanced interns who provided project and functional support to various departments.

We invited our 2024 cohort to share their experiences with UT, reflecting on what they accomplished, what they learned, and how it may inform their future studies or career choices. Three main themes emerged through these conversations and written feedback: their projects felt meaningful; they were able to hone existing skills or develop new ones; and their work helped them understand and consider potential careers in the biopharma industry.

UT Research Triangle Park, N.C. campus

MEANINGFUL PROJECT WORK

The Society for Human Resource Management offers some useful guidance to businesses seeking to design internship programs. In short, internships shouldn’t be used for busy work.1 Giving interns work that is valuable to the company is an earmark of UT’s internship approach.

Juleysi Rosario’s experience was that and more. Interning with our Financial Planning and Analysis team (FP&A), Juleysi lent a hand when an FP&A team member took ill. “I was given projects I needed to learn quickly how to complete and even helped with quarter close,” she explained. “My overall summer project was focused on costing for clinical work. I had never done that before. It helped me see the links between finance and the organization’s purpose better. Finance is not just about the numbers; it’s about the science that is helping save people’s lives.”

The real-world impact UT has on people’s lives was a common thread in what interns shared about what they valued about interning at UT. “I didn’t even know what EVLP [ex vivo lung perfusion] was before I came to UT,” explained Daphne Gomez Escudero, who interned with our Lung Bioengineering (LBE) subsidiary. “The beauty of EVLP is seeing an impact on the lives of patients.”

According to the Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN), only about 20 percent of donor lungs in the U.S. are used for transplant. The reason? Among other factors, lungs are fragile and how a person lived or died affects the suitability of any organ for transplantation and whether a transplant surgeon will accept the lung for their patient-recipient. Our LBE group helps increase the number of organs available for transplant through the application of EVLP.2

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Obviously, strengthening existing skills and developing new skills are high priority outcomes for any internship project.

Several students shared their gratitude for being able to add new tools to their growing toolbox. For example, David Nguyen developed an appreciation for the power and utility of Smartsheet—which is a software as service project collaboration and document management platform.3

Charlotte Owusu-Hammond, Oreoluwa Erinfolami, Michael Trzaskowski, and Jacob Calderon shared that they secured certification in design thinking applicable to any function or industry.

Deanna Johnson was able to complete the Good Clinical Practice CITI certification, which is mandatory for all clinical research professionals. She also completed training in several systems for managing data and documents associated with clinical trials. Hannah Enck was glad to deepen her understanding of a tool as widely used as Microsoft Excel. “I can now see how many things I can do with my biostatistics major, and how much more powerful of a tool Excel is than I even understood before,” she explained.

All interns are required to present to leaders and peers about what they learned at the end of their internships. Dubem Abuah, who worked on helping advance a greenhouse gas research project, was able to meet with and present to people at all levels in the organization throughout his internship, including some executive-level leaders. “I learned more subtle nuances about how to deliver a good presentation and developed more confidence in my presentation skills,” Dubem explained. Shatakshi Praveen Shewale, who focused on computational biology research, similarly said she developed skills useful for her career path. “This internship helped me improve my critical thinking and problem-solving abilities. I gained hands-on experience with bioinformatics tools, particularly focusing on Slingshot for pseudotime analysis4, which has been invaluable for my research skills.”

Others shared how their internships helped them develop a deeper appreciation for some standard business concepts. Amanda Barreto was one of the interns who joined our Regenerative Medicine Laboratory. Unfortunately, not all projects go as planned. “This internship helped me understand what one of UT’s core values—to be ‘nimble’—really means,” Amanda explained. “I learned more about what it means to pivot when things don’t go as planned. You can learn from those experiences, too.”

IS BIOPHARMA FOR ME

A key reason for investing in the continual growth and improvement of our internship program at UT is talent pipeline development. We hope some will choose to become Unitherians in the future or champion UT to their peers who may apply for positions. We are also keen on growing the entire biotech sector, so we are also happy when our interns consider or secure opportunities with other organizations in the biotech industry.

“This is my second-year interning with UT,” said Lixy Banegas-Morales who is a biology student on the pre-physician assistant track. “I was a bit nervous because I didn’t think my intern role this year [with the Commercial Training and Development team] was aligned with my career aspirations. But I learned more about what I could do with my degree and how these disciplines—the science side and the business side—are connected. This team helped me realize that there are so many more options within pharmaceuticals for someone with my degree (biology).”

Second tenures came up a few times. Bradie “Luke” Moore also completed his second internship with UT this summer. “I was an undergraduate when I interned for the first time. That internship helped me understand the value of getting my MBA degree,” Luke explained. This year, Luke worked with the Marketing team, focusing on business processes and understanding what it takes to enable patient access to therapies. “I worked on creating customer relationship management materials to help patients and their healthcare providers understand the disease state. Both internships helped me see that a career in the pharmaceutical industry could be in my future.”

Daphne shared a similar insight: “It has opened my eyes, made me see more possibilities for what I could do with my bioengineering degree and solidified my desire to go into industry.”

For some interns, the work at UT busted some stereotypes about industry. “I am seeking my Ph.D. in bioengineering, and I always thought I wanted to be a professor,” Amanda said. “In fact, some professors said that working in industry is tiring, that it’s not creative, and that you don’t have any direct contact with patients. Like what Daphne said, this internship opened my eyes! I learned that the stereotype is completely wrong. There is a lot of cooperation, a lot of innovation, and UT’s work has a direct impact on patients’ lives.”

STUDENT LED EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT (SLED)

Launched by Shola Oyewole, VP of Digital Innovation, the SLED program builds on the success of the Big Idea competition Shola established in UT in 2022 through which Unitherians submit ideas that improve the quality of life of patients. Since the inception of the program, teams have submitted more than 140 novel ideas.

Building from the success of this initiative, Shola created the SLED program to create a dynamic, collaborative environment where innovative ideas are nurtured, and where both students and UT employees benefit from mutual learning and professional growth.

“I was invited to present about drug development to a class at American University,” Shola recalled. Students expressed great interest in the topic, so I created a modified version of the Big Idea competition for the classroom. I posed a real-world UT problem to the graduate students of the biology program and invited them to form teams to present their ideas to a panel comprised of two Unitherians, and three university professors. We invited the winning team to join UT as summer interns.”

Charlotte, Jacob, Michael, Oreoluwa, and Mwinongo Isaac Matte (who was not able to participate in this conversation) comprised the winning team and joined UT’s Department of Innovative Technology this summer. Their project: to document the end-to-end lifecycle of drug development, recommend process improvements, and make pricing recommendations. The pilot program seems to have been a resounding success.

“UT’s purpose is about saving people’s lives, but it is also a business. We were challenged to use our design-thinking skills to think about pricing. We learned so much about the business and were invited to think like business owners.” Oreoluwa shared.

WHAT ELSE AND WHAT’S NEXT

UT’s Black Affinity Organization, an employee-led employee resource group (ERG), supported human resources (HR) in engaging interns through a voluntary, liaison program. The HR team hopes to continue to partner with leaders, managers, and its ERGs to grow and evolve UT’s internship program over time.

“My personal goal,” said Gina Psallidas, UT’s Talent Acquisition Specialist, is to get the same feedback from all our interns as we got from Daphne this year, who called her tenure with UT ‘the best summer ever!’”

Students interested in applying to become a UT intern should follow UT’s corporate account on LinkedIn, and start looking for internship postings on our career page in the fall.

UNITED NATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS (UN SDGS)

UT’s internship program aligns with multiple goals, but especially UN SDGs 3, 4, and 8.