Initiative and internships drive graduate to industry

Through changing majors, joining clubs, networking with alumni, and finding internships, graduate Makenna Davis has built a successful academic career driven by her own initiative.

Originally a management information systems major, Davis is graduating summa cum laude with a degree in applied statistics and data analytics and will be starting a job in Arkansas for Procter & Gamble this summer after a successful internship with the company last year.

“My specific role is a category management team information technology manager,” explained Davis, who is from Syracuse. “I’ll be doing data analytics specifically for the personal care team for Walmart. I’m excited for the opportunity because it’s our biggest customer.”

Davis always enjoyed math and science classes. After taking accounting and marketing classes in high school, she thought that business would be a good fit for her college degree. Between her second and third years, she interned at Travelers Insurance in the business insights and analytics leadership development program, where she was advised to get a stronger foundation in math to be able to advance further in an analytics role. She listened and switched majors.

The Travelers Insurance internship came about after Davis heard good things about the company through RIT alumni. She reached out to different people via LinkedIn who worked for Travelers to inquire if the internship would be a good fit.

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Davis poses with the Charmin bear mascot. She will be working with the personal care team for Procter & Gamble.

“I had more knowledge about the company and who they are and what they value and things like that,” said Davis. “Every time I’ve spoken to alumni through LinkedIn, they’ve been really open to having a quick Zoom chat, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. A lot of people have been very helpful.”

Even before that internship, Davis had previous experience working in a parts warehouse between her freshman and sophomore years. She was using that company’s warehouse system to do tasks like processing returns.

“I had these soft skills from working a full-time job, so I was able to twist all of those things into being experienced in a role,” said Davis. “That landed me a good talking point for interviewing with Travelers the next summer. You just kind of have to take the first job, even if it’s not exactly what you want, to get what you want in your second year.”

Davis was interested in applying for an internship at Procter & Gamble the same summer as she did for Traveler’s, but the former did not accept sophomores. She did attend a three-day program at headquarters in Cincinnati, where she essentially interviewed as a sophomore for a position two summers away. She landed that internship in business analytics, which then led to her having a full-time job with the company after graduation.

The various summer internships drew a direct path to a future career, but Davis said her on-campus extracurricular leadership experiences were a huge part of her success.

She got involved early on in clubs then homed in on the ones that seemed most important or interesting to her. Throughout her time at RIT, she became president of Business and Technology Professionals and vice president of the Artificial Intelligence Club. Experiences navigating team dynamics helped her stand out in interviews.

“I’m proud of the fact that I built my path the way I did,” said Davis. “I am thankful that I got to take from everything that I was interested in. I got the business. I got the stats. I got the AI. I got to touch everything that I wanted to touch.”