When inodú, a company focused on providing energy and sustainability services to its clients, was hiring an international industrial engineering intern, they turned to Georgia Tech to help find the right person. “We needed someone to perform data manipulation, analysis, and programming to aid in the development of new solutions and tools for our clients,” said company co-founder Donny Holaschutz. “We have hosted Georgia Tech interns in the past, and they have always brought a lot of value to our organization.”

Abhita Moorthy, a third-year ISyE student specializing in economic and financial systems, saw the job posting and was excited about the opportunity to put her education — in Spanish and industrial engineering — to the test. Her skill set was a perfect fit, and, less than two months later, Moorthy was boarding a flight to Chile for a four-month internship in a new country. “I was really nervous!” Moorthy said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

Despite a few bumps in the road, which included a major housing switch just a few days after arriving in Santiago, Moorthy quickly adapted to the Chilean lifestyle and her work at inodú.

“We had a client that was looking to identify opportunities in the natural gas market in Chile,” explained Holaschutz. “The analysis that Abhita did in terms of how gas is being used — and some of the historical trends associated with the use of gas in the electricity and industrial sectors — was very useful to provide our client insights.”

Moorthy used her data manipulation skills in Python to gather data from the Chilean power market and then created data visualizations and graphics to provide insights to clients.

The professional highlight of her time at inodú was seeing the graphs and value chain maps she prepared included in the presentation Holaschutz and his team delivered to the client.

“It was really exciting to see the work that I had done in the past four months come together,” Moorthy said. “I think that the information was very useful for the client as they made their decisions about the Chilean energy market.”

Creating solutions that truly made an impact on the company and its clients made her experience at inodú even more valuable. “The projects that I worked on and the tools I developed are things they can continue to use even though my internship is over,” Moorthy said. “It was so much more than just an ‘intern project.’”

When she wasn’t in the office, Moorthy used her free time to travel — from the Andes Mountains to the Atacama Desert. Toward the end of her time in South America, she and her sister traveled south to Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. “We were 760 miles from Antarctica,” she explained. “We were in the southernmost part of the world. More south than South Africa, more south than Australia and New Zealand. It was so amazing just to think about that.”

In addition to her global internship, Moorthy participated in the Language for Business and Technology (LBAT) program in summer 2017 and spent 10 weeks immersed in the language and culture of Peru and Spain. She will also be spending a semester at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in spring 2019. Taking advantage of the many international opportunities available to ISyE students has helped Moorthy figure out her future goals. “Before I went to Santiago, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do after Georgia Tech,” she said. “But I’ve realized that I want to either work abroad or for a company with a global focus.”

The interns aren’t the only ones benefiting from the Global Internship Program — the skills, knowledge, and fresh perspectives that they bring add significant value to the organizations as well. “Companies today are competing in a very global and dynamic marketplace,” Holaschutz said. “One way for a company like ours to really differentiate ourselves is through the people that we hire and the environment that we create. We bring in very talented interns from top universities in the U.S. and Chile because it creates a multidisciplinary and multicultural environment in our office. Diverse backgrounds and perspectives lead to a different work environment and also produce outputs that are much more interesting because of the creative tension that is created.”

The inodú team is looking forward to a long and successful partnership with Georgia Tech. “We are definitely eager to continue to bring more industrial engineers from Georgia Tech to our company,” added Holaschutz. “Not only as interns, but also in the future as full-time employees.”