During the fall 2015 semester, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with Georgia‐Pacific, LLC in Atlanta, Georgia. While at GP, I worked as a strategic sourcing and procurement analyst supporting the MRO and capital group. Essentially, this group is responsible for purchasing maintenance and operating supplies for the multiple GP facilities as well as purchasing the capital equipment needed to produce our products.

One of my key responsibilities included developing commercial evaluations based on supplier bid proposals developing an economic point of view based on the best total cost of ownership. I was also responsible for analyzing commodity information to provide benchmarking tools for the category. I worked on various projects throughout the six months, and even had the chance to present to the CEO of the company.

Like many other co‐op students, I was hesitant at first to participate in a six‐month internship because that would mean taking a semester off of school, and therefore, pushing back my graduation date. However after completing my internship, I could not be happier with my decision to do a co-op. My internship allowed me to grow both personally and professionally in so many ways. Having real-world working experience has given me such a better understanding of supply chain as a whole and it will allow me to easily apply these concepts in the classroom.