Planning on the Rocks
Creating a business strategy surrounded by America's highest mountain range.
A highly selective summer program for graduate students, the National Parks Business Plan Internship (BPI) allows graduate students to gain business, policy, and management skills you can't get in the classroom, all against some of the most beautiful backdrops and culturally significant sites in the world. This post profiles one of our recent interns and her experience in the park.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Before grad school, I bounced up and down the West Coast and over to China, working for a big tech company as well as starting my own business. I am now an MBA student at UC Berkeley studying finance and strategy in impact careers.
Tell us a little bit about your goal for your work in the park.
We were tasked with re-evaluating the park's strategy for guided rock climbing and mountaineering, which had been the same for over 30 years. After analyzing the market and interviewing a lot of internal and external stakeholders, we made a recommendation that will improve visitor experience while strengthening stewardship of the natural wilderness resources. The park will implement the new strategy at the beginning of next year!
Tell us what it was like being in the park itself for your internship.
Rocky Mountain National Park holds so many dramatically beautiful wilderness features - trails through lush alpine forest, sparkling emerald lakes, rushing mountain rivers, jagged rocky peaks, desolate tundra - and we played in them all. From after-work trail runs around nearby alpine lakes, to countless high-altitude hikes through wildflower meadows up to the rugged tundra at the Continental Divide, to summiting our first Colorado "fourteener," we explored the park and well as nearby areas on foot. In the clear mountain rivers, we spent cool weekday evenings learning to fly fish and hot weekend afternoons floating in tubes. We climbed some of the park's world-famous rock-climbing routes, and danced at a bluegrass festival at a nearby ranch. There wasn't enough time to do our project work and everything else we wanted to, but we did everything we could!
Tell us what you're taking away from your experience.
This summer gave me the opportunity to own a strategic project and deepen my consulting skills ... while also learning to fly fish! After experiencing first-hand how my business skills can be vital at a government agency like the parks, the BPI internship renewed my commitment to an impact career path. I will continue to explore the range of impact careers, from completely mission-driven organizations like NPS to profit-driven businesses centered around a social mission.