My Real World Experience Interning at Rosov Consulting
by Victoria Maler
If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be conducting social science research for Jewish communities around the country at a consulting firm, I wouldn’t have believed you. I wouldn’t have even known that Jewish consulting exists!
Growing up, I was very involved in the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish community. After graduating from the Jewish Community High School of the Bay, I was certain that I wanted to spend a year living and learning in Jerusalem. But when it came time to choose which college I would attend, as a daughter of two immigrants from the former Soviet Union, a liberal arts school was out of the question. My parents wanted to ensure that I obtained a degree that would secure me a stable and well-paying job. Because I did not want to study science, law, or engineering, business school was the compromise.
At Babson College my major is Business, and my focus is on Social Entrepreneurship. As cheesy as it sounds, I hope to use my education in order to better the world. My courses in accounting, marketing, and finance are intended to prepare me for the business world. My true passion, however, is the Jewish world. In my spare time, I teach Hebrew School, tutor students for their B’nai Mitzvah, and plan Jewish programs at Camp Tawonga, the summer camp that was so influential during my formative years. I have always felt a constant struggle between these two parts of my identity and unsure of which path I was ultimately going to pursue.
This past semester I was a participant in Babson’s San Francisco “away” program and was searching for an internship that could complement my studies. But the more LinkedIn searches I did, the fewer opportunities I found that fit my interests. In July, a friend of mine from high school suggested that I intern at Rosov Consulting. It presented itself as the perfect opportunity—a way to combine my two passions, Judaism and business.
Throughout the past few months, I observed and contributed to a vibrant, dynamic, and multinational team at a midsize consulting firm. Upon my arrival, one of the first tasks to which I was assigned was cold calling several retirees in Tucson, Arizona. Typically, Rosov’s method of scheduling interviews and focus groups is done through emailing and texting, but we noticed that the retiree population was not very responsive to that method of communication. I spent an entire day having conversations with Jewish seniors from the entire Southern Arizona region. Some seniors who answered the phone weren’t super eager to chat, but others were delighted to speak to a young person. One woman on the other end of the line spent almost 20 minutes telling me her entire life story and details about Jewish life in Tucson.
The most meaningful part of my internship was definitely working on the San Francisco Bay Area Teen Initiative, a project across the Bay Area working to engage teens in new and meaningful Jewish experiences. I was tasked with gathering qualitative data through focus group transcription and was shocked to learn the amount of hard work—including planning, analysis, and research—that goes into each program that I took for granted as a teenager. I was also tasked with researching local communal and philanthropic organizations to help build our internal knowledge. It was very meaningful to give back to the programs and the community that shaped me into the Jewish leader I am today.
As I head back to Massachusetts, I leave Rosov with an experience that prepared me for the real world and with the confidence I need to succeed in an office and a team environment. At Rosov, I witnessed that everyone truly values each other’s professional development; teams are comprised of a variety of levels of expertise, which allows team members to face challenges together, make mistakes, and learn from one another. My colleagues at Rosov are intelligent, funny, open, and encouraging. Through working alongside this team, I learned a lot about people and, specifically, how they can shape their world through their actions and how they are impacted by their experiences. Most importantly, Rosov proved to me that I won’t ever have to choose between business or Judaism; I can have both.
Victoria Maler is a sophomore at Babson College. For more information on internships at Rosov Consulting, email careers[at]rosovconsulting.com.
