Name: Morgan Harlan

Year: Senior

Major: Economics

Minor: Business Institutions

CFS Class: Field Studies in Public Health

Employer: MATTER

This quarter, I am an intern at MATTER which is a healthcare startup incubator. MATTER offers memberships to Chicago-area startups that are seeking funding, aiming to scale their business, and further develop their ideas. As a MATTER member, companies gain access to resources such as co-working space, connections to investors, mentorships, workshops, pitch practices, speaking events, etc. As an organization, MATTER’s team is fairly small (~16 employees). The different teams within the organization are events, programming, service delivery and marketing. This winter, I am an intern primarily with the service delivery team. The service delivery team ensures that MATTER members are utilizing all of the resources offered to them. They are also the point-people to give tours, answer questions about the space, take care of administrative needs, and to generally maintain the company. So far, I have been involved in a few projects. My first project was to help the service delivery team track member engagement in MATTER programming. To do so, I pulled data from a number of different sources- the swipe-in box to see which members were checking in daily, google calendar to see which conference rooms are being used/ who is booking them, etc. I cleaned this data and then made a graph for the month of January to make a visual depicting member engagement. I also have spent time at the help desk and have been able to meet members as they enter or come by to speak to the team. Finally, I worked on a marketing project to compile all relevant MATTER news in a database to track the mention of member companies in the news. Overall, my time with MATTER combined with my Field Studies in Public Health seminar has been the perfect experience for my last quarter at Northwestern. I have had the opportunity to learn about critical public health issues in an academic setting, and then meet the entrepreneurs working to solve them in a professional setting. I have gained connections and experience that will serve me well in my career!