What and where did you study before your Mountbatten internship? 

English & Psychology at the University of Virginia

What made you apply for the Mountbatten program?

I wanted to get my MBA and travel in Europe at the same time!

Describe your sponsor company and your role within it.

I was a Sales Enablement Strategy Analyst at Thomson Reuters, where I worked on a project to revamp the sales resources by conducting research across teams to determine what they needed.

What was the highlight/most memorable moment of your working experience during this year?

I loved meeting the sales enablement and marketing teams and sales leadership at Thomson Reuters and watching how they worked together, observing how decisions were made and group dynamics.

What was the social highlight/most memorable moment during this year?

It was the best year of my life! I loved being able to easily travel to new places across Europe every weekend. Some of my favourite trips were going to Iceland to see the Northern Lights and having fermented shark and brennivin (gross, never again), kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland, and hiking down the stunning coastline of Cinque Terre. I also loved living so centrally in London and going to the British Museum, Tate Modern, Camden and Borough Markets, Hyde Park, Regent’s Park, Hampstead Heath. London feels like the centre of the world.

Please share a little wisdom/philosophy that you acquired during your internship.

If I could go back in time, I would remind myself to not be too overly concerned with trying to make an impact in my 1 year at Thomson Reuters, even though I had a role and responsibilities, I wish I had spent more time observing different parts of the business to get the exposure. There’s not much change that a 24 year old intern can make within a year at a Fortune 500 company – I should have spent more time meeting more people from across the organization and hear about their experiences. The Mountbatten internships that are at big global companies are such a unique opportunity to see how they operate from within!

Upon reflection, what do you consider has been the biggest impact of your Mountbatten year?

At a time when everyone around me was either working full-time, pursuing a higher degree, or taking time off to travel the world, it was amazing to be able to do all three within a short period of time. It felt very efficient. If I had continued to work or go back to school instead of joining the Mountbatten program, I would have missed out on a lot of the travel I wanted to do. It’s so much easier at that age; it’s near impossible now for me to take a full year and just travel the world. Being able to work and study at the same time also meant that I wasn’t falling behind my cohort, and was still reaching professional milestones while getting to see the world. It’s an unbelievable combination!

What happened after completing the year – what did you do next?

I moved to San Francisco and joined Oracle as a Sales Engineer.

Where are you now in your working life and what do you do?

I’m a Sales Engineer at Salesforce now and in my role, I help customers solve their business challenges with technology solutions. I support enterprise customers in the retail industry and have worked with executives at Starbucks, Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, and many others. I am pre-sales, which means that I help customers understand what Salesforce can do and I paint the vision of what their world could be like with our technology.

Do you have any future plans that you would like to realise & what are they (career & social)?

I want to go into leadership at Salesforce and inspire and guide others to achieve their full potential. I still love to travel and am lucky to be able to work remotely in my role, and I recently spent a month in Scandinavia with my family and boyfriend working remotely in the Salesforce offices in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm. My boyfriend and I are planning to go back to Europe with his family at the end of the year, this time to the Alps.

What would people be surprised to learn about you?

As a Sales Engineer in technology, I don’t have a degree in engineering or computer science! I studied English and Psychology in my undergraduate and have the Mountbatten MBA.

Is there any other information that you would like to be included? I would love to connect and get to know Mountbatten students and alumni. You can find me here on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ningtay/