From Intern to Impact

By Isaiah Diaz, PR and Content Intern, Summer 2026 Intern Class

A great internship does more than adding a line to a resume. It helps students discover what kind of professional they want to become.

This summer, Credo’s interns joined teams across the company, from Engineering and Business Operations to People Operations and Accounting. While they are from various backgrounds and majors with different career aspirations, their experiences revealed several common themes: meaningful work, cross-functional learning, and personal growth.

Hopes

These interns entered the program hoping to bridge the gap between classroom learning and professional application.

Varun Bhupathi, an AEC Return Merchandise Authorization Intern studying data science at UC Irvine, entered the internship eager to understand the journey from customer needs to finished products.

“I wanted to understand the full lifecycle of building a product, from gathering customer requests to identifying challenges and then developing a solution and refining it through feedback.”

For Alfie Whitemore, a Market Analysis and Strategy Intern and computer science student at the University of Colorado Boulder, the goal was to learn how technical innovation connects to business strategy.

“Being a computer science student, I spend a lot of time focused on the technical side of problems, but I wanted to understand how engineering connects to a business directly.”

Anna Kehoe, a People Operations Intern from Santa Clara University, saw the internship as a chance to explore two areas she is passionate about.

“I really wanted a lot of exposure to the AI industry and human resources in general, so I can walk away from this internship with more clarity regarding what I want to do in my future career.”

For Franco Caruso-Commisso, a returning Accounting Intern and economics student at Penn State University, the internship offered a firsthand look at the day-to-day responsibilities and challenges of working in corporate finance and accounting.

“Economics can be a broad field of study, so gaining more firsthand experience in a corporate finance and accounting position helped bring many of those concepts to life.”

Although their goals varied, interns quickly found that the experience would offer much more than they originally set out to gain.

Learning by Doing

The most rewarding aspect of the internship experience has been the opportunity to apply the skills they have been developing in the classroom and see their work create an actual business impact.

In Market Analysis & Strategy, Alfie has been helping develop a competitive analysis dashboard to track industry developments, market trends, and competitor activity across the AI infrastructure and semiconductor landscape. The project helps Credo stay informed about emerging opportunities and technological shifts within the market.

“Even if it’s just a spark of an idea that we pick up on, the company will be able to know about it, that’s valuable information.”

Although the project is still in development, his contributions will no doubt leave a mark on Credo.

In People Operations, Anna has been supporting efforts to create standard operating procedures (SOPs) and user-friendly work instructions for various HR processes. By simplifying complex compliance and payroll processes, her work helps improve employee experience while also supporting legal and audit requirements.

“I’m transferring these very formal SOPs into very user-friendly work instructions and making them accessible on the intranet. I believe this will help streamline the on-boarding process for new employees.”

These projects are just some of the many examples of how interns help Credo find solutions to real problems.

Learning Across Teams

Another key benefit the interns enjoy has been the opportunity to engage with teams outside of their designated responsibilities.

Through intern learning sessions, cross-functional projects, and everyday conversations, interns gained greater visibility into how different teams come together to drive Credo’s success.

For many interns, some of the most valuable learning happened outside their immediate teams. By working with colleagues across the organization, they saw how different perspectives and areas of expertise come together to solve problems and create impact. Whether supporting product, marketing, or business initiatives, interns gained a clearer understanding of how collaboration helps move ideas forward.

The Intern Training Series played an important role in that experience, giving interns direct exposure to teams and functions they might not encounter in their day-to-day work. As Alfie shared:

“Even though I’m primarily working with my boss, Myles (Senior Director, Business Operations), I’ve also had the opportunity to collaborate with teams like HR and Investor Relations on various projects. Through those experiences, and through Credo’s Intern Training Series, I’ve been able to learn about different parts of the company and gain a much better understanding of how everything comes together.”

Personal Growth

As interns prepare to wrap up their time here at Credo this summer, they were asked to reflect on where they have grown the most. While each experience was unique, many interns found their greatest growth was not in the skills that they had entered the program with.

For Varun, that growth came in the form of confidence.

“I’d say I’ve grown more confident in my work. Early on, I found myself second-guessing my work and wanting to triple-check everything. Over time, I became more comfortable trusting my skills, my team and the work we were producing.”

Through hands-on experience and ownership of meaningful projects, Varun learned to trust his abilities and judgment more than when he first arrived last year. Working through real-world challenges helped reinforce his confidence in applying the skills he had developed in the classroom.

For Franco, growth came from learning how to collaborate within a professional environment.

“When you’re working in a corporation where everyone has their own responsibilities and tasks, it’s a bit challenging to try and manage what you’re doing and what other people are doing when working together but good communication makes it easier.”

His experience highlighted the importance of communication, teamwork, and coordination. While many academic projects can be completed independently, working in a corporate setting requires employees to align priorities, collaborate across teams, and rely on one another to achieve shared goals.

Together, these experiences reflect a collective takeaway among Credo’s interns. Growth often comes not only from learning new skills, but from developing the confidence, communication, and professionalism needed to apply them in the workplace.

Takeaway

Throughout the summer, interns developed skills that reached far beyond their original goals. Varun embraced the importance of deeply understanding a problem before solving it, Alfie connected technical expertise with business strategy, Anna learned how thoughtful process improvements can make a meaningful difference, and Franco gained valuable experience working across teams toward a common objective. Together, these experiences transformed curiosity into capability and learning into action.

As they take the next steps in their careers, they leave Credo with a wider perspective, stronger skills, and greater confidence in their ability to make an impact.