Lever, Inc., North Adams, MA
This summer I had the opportunity to intern at Lever, Inc.—a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting innovation and entrepreneurship in Berkshire County. I worked under the guidance of Brent Filson, Head of Innovation; the direct supervision of Lev Simon, Intern Manager; and with my fellow Management Consulting Intern Jacob Fink ’23.
As Management Consulting Interns, our job was to assist any client companies with research concerning the companies’ products and services and the markets for such offerings. For example, one of my clients was a remote patient monitoring (RPM) system company that specialized in RPM platforms for asthma. The company wanted to expand to other chronic respiratory conditions such COPD and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and wanted to learn more about competitors in the RPM system market for respiratory conditions, geographic concentrations of high respiratory condition incidence rates, stipulations for RPM platform adoption by healthcare providers, and how recent changes in the Center for Medicare Services (CMS) Fiscal Year 2021 policies regarding RPM reimbursements affected insurance companies.
The RPM market was in its relative infancy at the time of this project and boomed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This client wanted more information that would help them adapt to the changing market landscape and provide them a greater opportunity to obtain a competitive advantage. I scoured the web for information that would help answer these questions, reading academic research papers, medical surveys, and insurance coverage policies. I synthesized my research into a comprehensive slide deck that I presented to the clients and answered any questions they had about my research and recommendations.
Additionally, I assisted the other employees at Lever with any tasks that I could be of assistance with. For example, Lev tasked the interns with doing research for a grant that Lever was applying to, and we needed to find information on characteristics of entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) around the country. He also thought it appropriate that we, as interns, should be accustomed to professional business frameworks and strategies for approaching various projects, thus we were assigned readings on entrepreneurship and business to make sure we had a mutual understanding of fundamental business concepts.
I also participated in the Berkshire Interns program, which helps connect summer interns at various Berkshire companies and teaches all interns career readiness skills. This summer, we learned about professionalism in the office workplace, career networking, and how to present oneself to employers.
After this summer, I have gotten a much better understanding of consulting as a profession; and thanks to the generous support of the Shah Family, this experience has helped me to narrow my career goals for the future in management consulting.