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Meet Alumna Kat Rosenthal ’13, Project Manager, John Moriarty & Associates

Name: Kat Rosenthal

Class Year: 2013

Title: Project Manager

Organization: John Moriarty & Associates, DC

 

1. In one sentence, what does your job entail? 

I manage the financial and manpower requirements to build buildings

 

2. What planned and unplanned events connected you to your industry and your first employer after Holy Cross? How did you learn/decided it was a good fit for you?    

A series of failed attempts at finding my passion lead me to start throwing darts at the wall to find a career. I wanted something that had a team component, as I missed playing sports so much. I connected with someone from high school who worked for a large general contractor in Boston who then pointed me in the direction of another general contractor. I reached out for an unpaid internship and was hired as a paid intern. Three months of interning lead to a full time job. Six years later, I now run my own project and still love what I do.

 

3. What were you involved in when you were on campus?  

Varsity softball, President of ABiGaLe/Allies (now Pride), Physics grading and tutoring, and a Pub Rat 🙂

 

4. What was your major and how did it affect your career decisions? 

I studied Physics with a Concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies. I knew I did not want to work in a lab forever after a few summer internships. Physics taught me how to collaborate and problem solve; I knew that whatever I did for a living had to let me critically think and work with a team.

 

5. What are one or two skills that you developed at Holy Cross that you use in your work?

Most definitely teamwork and creative problem solving. Construction is a very big field with a lot of different specialties. As a general contractor, we work to learn a little about a lot, working with the experts (designers and engineers) to make a building. It involves working as a team and problem solving as a group. So many times I know only high level details, but my ability to think outside the box to solve a difficult constructability issue is very helpful!

 

6. What advice do you have for students today?

Do as much as you can while you’re still at Holy Cross. Try everything you can. Get outside of your comfort zone. Do not worry so much about your grades. Instead, work hard, maintain a good reputation, and create great and long standing relationships with professors, staff, and classmates; that will pay off so much more in the long run.
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Meet #CrusaderIntern Karina Ramos ’20, Lab Technician Intern

Name: Karina Ramos

Class Year: 2020

Internship position: Intern- Lab Technician

Employer: Proveris Scientific Corporation

1. Tell us about where you interned over the summer and the kind of work you are doing.

This summer at Proveris, my main duties included running experiments for the Senior Applications Chemist and Senior Field Scientist in the chemistry laboratory. Specifically, the company’s focus is in advancing the aerosol and nasal spray technology industry, so the majority of my time was collecting data off the instrumentation and analyzing it using custom software designed by the company. Not only was I working within my immediate team, but also spent much of my time communicating and deliberating with the engineering, sales, and manufacturing teams. These wide range of duties allowed me to have a holistic understanding of the inner workings that is the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Give us an example of how you have applied your academic learnings to your internship?

Just before I began my internship, I took Analytical and Instrumental Chemistry. In this course we learned how to read scholarly journals by meticulously studying currently published works and modeling common practices in our own papers. This skill of reading with intention allowed me to become more efficient and confident in my ability to read papers that at first seem too complex to understand. Some of my duties this summer included doing research on past literature in the field to further develop methods for more efficient data collection. My confidence in reading peer reviewed journals and gathering a consensus of the paper’s findings made me a valuable asset in the method development step in conducting experiments.

3. What has surprised you about being an intern?

I have been pleasantly surprised at how eager my department was to allow me to troubleshoot issues in the instrumentation and software on my own. Also, within the first couple of weeks working full-time, I was grateful enough to receive some projects that I could effectively work on myself. Working for a smaller company gave me more autonomy in day to day tasks that lead to working on customer projects independently and with confidence from my supervisors. I am thankful to be given so much responsibility at the intern level.

4. How did this experience influence or connect to your future career plans / goals?

This experience allowed me to expand my network not only into the Holy Cross alumni network, but also into the pharma industry. Working in industry instead of research (which is what I have only been exposed to) has given a good insight to what a routine looks like working for pharma.

5. Any internship advice to pass on to other Holy Cross students?

Network with alumni at the beginning of your junior year so they keep you in mind when applications come out in the spring! Also apply to a variety of different fields in different locations around the country.