DATE: 2021

ROLE: Project Manager (Ann-Dialie Cesaire)

PROJECT OVERVIEW

At Ernst & Young Consulting Firm, I served as a key lead for the firm's youth empowerment internship program — an initiative designed to expose over 30 interns to the consulting industry through hands-on experience, mentorship, and internal training.

The program spanned multiple departments and required close coordination between interns, consultants, and program leadership. I was responsible for ensuring that both structure and support systems were in place to keep interns on track, mentors informed, and program leads aligned with real-time progress.

This wasn’t about following a checklist. My role was to bring clarity, reduce confusion, and elevate the entire intern experience through calm, intentional strategy and grounded execution support.

MY CONTRIBUTION

• Orchestrated intern coordination across multiple consulting teams

  Managed day-to-day communication for 30+ interns placed across 5+ consulting departments, ensuring team placements were clearly communicated and tracked. I maintained a live database of assignments, points of contact, and project focus areas — giving everyone visibility into where interns were placed and what their core deliverables were.

• Facilitated structured engagement loops with program leadership

  Organized and led bi-weekly check-in sessions with program leads, senior consultants, and interns to surface concerns, realign expectations, and share progress. These sessions reduced 25% of related questions and confusion about role responsibilities and increased intern engagement by giving them consistent access to feedback and mentorship.

• Introduced a centralized tracking system using Airtable

  Designed and implemented an Airtable base that captured intern status, weekly deliverables, mentor notes, and check-in outcomes. By consolidating updates into one platform, I eliminated the need for multiple tools and significantly reduced friction between interns and mentors. This also allowed leadership to view real-time progress across all departments.

• Streamlined scheduling and weekly communications to reduce friction

  Identified bottlenecks in communication by surveying interns and shadowing interactions. Based on feedback, I created a simplified meeting schedule that reduced overlap and gave interns more time to work without interruption. I also implemented automated weekly summaries via Google Docs to recap goals and deliverables, helping interns manage expectations without feeling overwhelmed.

• Optimized feedback delivery and documentation processes

  Created a standard format for mentor feedback that allowed consistency across departments. Interns received feedback in a clear, structured format that made expectations visible and actionable. This reduced anxiety for interns and made it easier for program leads to spot trends in performance or miscommunication.

  TOOLS & PLATFORMS

  Notion

  Slack

  SOP’s (documents, guide)

  MS office

  Dubsado

  OUTCOME

  Interns reported higher clarity and satisfaction due to reduced confusion and a more intentional structure. The program itself experienced a 15% improvement in operational efficiency, and several of the workflows I created were adopted as repeatable systems for future cohorts. The program wrapped with strong leadership alignment, well-documented intern outcomes, and clear insight into what made the summer successful.

Intern journey map used to guide and document key stages of intern participation, mentorship, and project flow. This was designed to improve structure, reduce confusion, and ensure interns received consistent support across departments.