Leaders 4 a Day

The John Cabot University Institute for Entrepreneurship works hard to regularly offer exciting and unique experiences for students through a variety of partnerships. Last month, I was lucky enough to be chosen for a wonderful experience that only had two open slots.

On April 10, I participated in an event organized by Junior Achievement called Leaders 4 a Day. Junior Achievement is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating students in school about topics like entrepreneurship. Leaders 4 a Day is a job-shadowing experience only given to 10 students selected from all universities and high schools in Italy: five people for the event in Rome and five people for the event in Milan. This event aims to provide students with a clearer understanding of their future career, expand their network, and hopefully lead students to potential future employment opportunities.

My experience took place at MetLife, an international insurance company. Each one of us was assigned to shadow an employee who is a leader within the company. After meeting our manager, we Skyped the students and managers in the same program in Milan. Then we started in on the day's work, which meant shadowing a manager and spending the entire day as if we were part of the team. My leader was Manuele D’Anastasio, the Portfolio Administration Supervisor. In the morning, Manuele and I had a meeting with two other MetLife employees about a project that aims to collect missed payments from their customers. They divided tasks among the team members, and Manuele and I went to his desk to start working on the lists of customers that were not paying their insurance anymore.

After lunch, I was given the chance to participate in an international conference call in English with the US and India on the closure of a project that had lasted two years. In the afternoon, we had another meeting with a different manager and his “shadow” because Manuele wanted to inform him about the company's decision to change software. At the end of the day, we Skyped again with Milan and we all shared our comments and opinions about the experience with one another. It was an incredible day, which I found to be very educational and inspiring. I would recommend to anyone the experience of being a "shadow" so that they too might gain a more clearer idea of what they would like to do in the future. I truly feel that this experience personally shed light on my future career goals.

Before this experience, I had very limited knowledge about insurance companies, but as soon as the day started I found the company's environment very familiar and comfortable. Manuele was patient, and willing to dedicate time to explaining his job to me. I am really thankful to John Cabot and the Institute for Entrepreneurship for this opportunity to be a part of the MetLife team for a day!