My Experience as a PepsiCo IT Strategy and Transformation Intern

During my sophomore year as an Information Technology and Systems major, I attended my first Career Advice Round Table Event (back when we could all sit together! 😂). During this event, what truly stood out to me the most were the PepsiCo representatives. They were genuinely passionate about the company and discussed with me, the most amazing experiences during their internships. Although you had to be a senior to get in, quickly thereafter I applied, but as expected I got rejected.

During Fall 2019, when I was officially qualified to apply, I was delighted to find out that I was selected for the Summer 2020 internship program as an IT Strategy and Transformation intern at the IT global headquarters in Plano, TX. Despite all my excitement, I quickly became nervous as the coronavirus pandemic spread, and students were anxiously waiting for their companies to respond with their plans for the summer. After weeks of waiting, I was beyond relieved that the internship continued. However, the program became virtual and shortened to 6 weeks, while still upholding to the initial contract and paying us 12 weeks of wages. Overall, I was impressed by the active response that PepsiCo had to the many events occurring during such an unpredictable time.

The program, despite being only 6 weeks, was well organized and provided us with all the resources that we needed to optimize our time. As a Strategy and Transformation Intern, I worked with a Supplier Labor Management team, where my team members were in Mexico City, Mexico, and Hyderabad, India. This gave me a great opportunity to hone my cross-cultural communication and collaboration skills. I was responsible to lead and design a holistic view of supplier rate cards from various firms to enable an automated and more streamlined comparison view across the IT portfolio. After normalizing the abundant data from the rate cards, I analyzed that data on Tableau and created a comprehensive dashboard to draw inferences and provide recommendations to a panel of executives.

Apart from our functional tasks as aforementioned, interns participated in a cross-functional team challenge and were also invited to a series of leadership speaker events, where we had the opportunity to hear from the CEO of PepsiCo, Ramon Laguarta; the CEO of Frito Lay, Steven Williams and many others from the various leadership roles in the company.

For the cross-functional team challenge, I was a part of a group of interns from various functions such as Supply Chain and Sales. We had to provide recommendations on how to grow the business within the gaming community by utilizing e-commerce, much like Mountain Dew and Doritos. PepsiCo recognizes the potential in the $300 billion industry and reached out to us interns for a new perspective and innovative ideas. It is extremely rewarding to be able to work on a project where is the company is genuinely interested in potentially implementing the solution.

Overall my experience with the company has been phenomenal, I now understand how those representatives felt when they were given an opportunity to share their own internship experience. Thank you to everyone at PepsiCo for coordinating this program during such unprecedented times.