Name: Dhruv Khandelwal
Year: Sophomore
Major: Economics
CFS Class: Business Field Studies
Employer: Corecentra Solutions

During Winter 2021, I have had the opportunity to intern at Corecentra Solutions, an impact measurement, and management company that works with various entities such as government agencies and private non-profits to help them measure their social impact and responsibility. Because of the small size of the company and its startup ethos, the work has been all-hands-on-deck. An experience in the classroom that has related to the work I do was a guest lecture during the initial weeks of the CFS program by Mr. Fahim Tapia, a current Deloitte Consultant, and Northwestern alum. Mr. Tapia shared not only his own experiences with the CFS program and what it was like to intern with Morgan Stanley, but also emphasized the importance of having a personal brand. In the lecture, he mentioned how he wanted his brand to be centered around empathy, and the benefits he reaped at Morgan Stanley, as a result.
As I got more into my work at Corecentra Solutions, I realized that my personal brand would have to be about adaptation. For one, I was doing my internship, remote, from India, meaning that a literal time adaptation would have to occur. But more than that, it was the work that I was doing, which lent itself to that brand. I was bouncing from project to project, and even when I was working on something with a singular focus, the idea was always about improving. Whether it be the actual task or the way of completing it. I was always changing something for the better.
As my CFS experience comes to its completion, I know that the idea of a personal brand will stick with me wherever I go. Perhaps it even changes according to my circumstance, or maybe it remains the same no matter what direction I take, but the idea of having a brand that I can use to my professional strengths to differentiate myself will always be there. It has to be there. Mr. Tapia’s lecture taught me that.