Meet our 2020 Interns

Author:

Verana Health

We had the pleasure of inviting a group of talented and driven interns to join us for summer 2020.  Diving headfirst into the projects assigned to them, they made impactful contributions to our company by collaborating cross-functionally across our team on critical initiatives.  Learn more about the experiences of some of our interns below!

Lefko Charalambous
Commercial & Partnerships Team / Medical Team

Collaborative and welcoming are the two words that immediately come to mind when describing the culture at Verana Health. Through the Verana@Home series, daily and weekly standup meetings, regular one-on-ones, and even participating in a virtual offsite, I felt like I developed lasting relationships with my teammates that I hope to nurture well into the future. Within the first week, I had met with colleagues from all departments and at all levels and every single person went out of their way to emphasize how willing they were to help me with anything. Fast forward a few weeks later, and I had been welcomed by multiple teams as I was designing a truly interdisciplinary project. Since then, multiple teams had helped me get crucial information for my project and they had even reached out to me to provide some clinical input for their own projects! I had never been in an environment where coworkers were asking for my input so quickly and were willing to go out of their way to help me succeed, too.

The main project that I worked on for the summer was incredibly interdisciplinary and a really interesting problem from both a scientific and business perspective. Bridging the gap between business and medicine is precisely why I decided to pursue an MD/MBA, and the project that I was able to craft with my supervisors at Verana checked all those boxes. 

My favorite part of being at Verana has been my own personal career development, being able to collaborate with our incredibly talented full-time team while also regularly working with our other physician-consultants was immensely valuable. I gained amazing insight into how to structure my career to be able to continue to collaborate with leaders in health tech while also being a practicing clinician. Being able to have these conversations with leaders in the field who were genuinely interested in speaking with me was both refreshing and exciting!

Poonam Sacheti
Commercial & Partnerships Team 

This internship went way beyond my expectations. I felt connected with the teams and knew how my work impacted the organization. I was able to complete four projects during my time and had an immense amount of learning. The projects challenged my thinking and brought out the best in me. 

All four projects I worked on were beneficial to Verana Health and my career aspirations. I made strong meaningful relationships and learned so much about clinical trials: the patient journey, pain points and challenges, solutions that exist in the market and what drives their success. I picked up product management skills, applied my past experience to build best practices for project management and capped it off with a cost-benefit analysis for integrating imaging data and clinical data. This was literally one of my dream projects.

Culture at Verana Health is casual but at the same time sincere and respectful. Everyone here is connected to the mission of the company and is fully engaged and immersed in delivering the best results. The leadership team advocates for and practices transparency and collaboration. I feel fortunate to have been part of this super talented and driven team at Verana. Personally, the balance between autonomy and sufficient guidance and direction has been optimal to deliver high-quality work.

Jaanhvi Vaidya
Product Team

During my internship, I was given free rein to work on a high-exposure project that will have a lasting impact on the company, which was terrifying, exciting and overall such a great experience. On top of the actual work, I was pleasantly surprised by the frequent company-wide social events, town halls, and fun traditions like Slack trivia. Also, I got some awesome company swag! 

Coming into business school I knew a few things: 1) I wanted to do an internship at a smaller company, 2) I wanted to gain experience as a Product Manager, specifically experience actually shipping and iterating on a product, and 3) I wanted to be at a company that was making a tangible, direct impact on people. I was deciding between a PM role at two different companies. Ultimately, I chose Verana because I knew the opportunity fit all my criteria, and I felt that my manager was really invested in my growth and would make sure I’d get the best experience possible. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint one thing, but I think the best part of being at Verana this summer has been the breadth of exposure that I’ve had – to product, company strategy, leadership, and more. Because of the size and collaborative nature of Verana Health, I’ve been able to see how the various parts of an organization can come together and learn from some incredibly smart and successful people. 

There’s still a lot of work to do related to the product I’ve worked on all summer, so I’m really excited to continue working part-time at Verana in the fall!


Interested in learning about opportunities to join the Verana team? View a list of open opportunities here.

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