UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Creativity and its technological applications have been Sureaya Inusah’s academic passion during her years as a double major in economics and art history at Penn State, and thanks to funding she received through the Virginia Todd Chapel Executive Internship Program in the College of the Liberal Arts, she was able to pursue the field as a solutions consulting intern with Adobe in New York City this summer.
The Chapel Executive Internship Program supports internship experiences for Liberal Arts students who achieve academic success and who seek top-level career development opportunities in the private sector. The program was established by Virginia "Jinnie" Todd Chapel and her husband, John, with leadership gifts creating an endowment now valued at $2.5 million. Virginia Todd Chapel graduated from Penn State in 1965 as an English major.
This year, the program offered 22 high-performing students a stipend of $5,000 for their internship experience.
Inusah finds empowerment in people-focused businesses, especially those that cater to their clients in a creative way. She knew from her first year at Penn State that she wanted to go into a professional career that merged data-driven technology with imaginative design.
“I started off as an economics major with the focus of going into business and really trying to double down on understanding how businesses can solve problems and how using user data can attribute to that,” Inusah said. “I then added art history to tap into my creative side.”
Merging the two has allowed Inusah to “get my scientific math side out with learning qualitative understanding while also holding an appreciation for different cultures and their applications to products.”
Inusah enjoyed that interning for Adobe allowed her to put her majors into practice.
“It was so cool because I got to go in on the business side — focusing on sales and market research — to understand and create diverse, personalized solutions to business problems,” she said.
As a solutions consulting intern, Inusah often brainstormed and presented designs to Adobe that were focused on client interactions and user experience. Oftentimes, this involved using the various Adobe software the company hosts, an experience Inusah believes helped her solidify her marketing abilities, especially through product presentations.
“On my day-to-day, I create these beautiful artboards of fake products that a company could envision themselves using for their clients,” Inusah said. “I work on this with Adobe XD [an Adobe Creative Cloud product], and it’s such an impressive and beautiful product. It definitely will be helping me at school.”
Inusah's most memorable moment at Adobe was when she went to the company's summer internship summit in San Jose, California. At the summit, she was able to learn about creating a people-first business and how people at Adobe can “grow into and through their positions” due to the company culture built on advancement and support. This summit experience combined with her internship experience confirmed Inusah’s desire to continue with technology and consulting.
“I now have an extensive knowledge of Adobe XD and so many other Adobe products that I will be using on my day-to-day. But aside from that, I’ve learned that I love making ideas, coming back full circle to that idea being executed and people being able to interact with it,” Inusah said. “What I will be leaving Adobe with is the ability to be purposeful with how I present, and not only with the content that I’m presenting, but how it’s being given to people and what is the most effective way that people can interpret it.”
Following graduation, Inusah will start a full-time consulting position with McKinsey & Company, and she plans to take with her this understanding of how customers interact with businesses.
“Using small, minute data to drive the personalization that a customer gets will be extremely useful,” she said.
Inusah gives thanks to both the College of the Liberal Arts and the Chapel Executive Internship Program for her ability to intern at Adobe this summer.
“The College of the Liberal Arts has always made sure that I have stayed on track for graduation, and the Chapel funding has allowed me to afford housing and transportation for the summer in New York City, which is notoriously expensive,” said Inusah.
She also credits Penn State’s alumni network for helping her land the internship.
“While looking for an internship, I had the opportunity to talk to Penn State alums who worked at Adobe. They were able to connect me with people within Adobe in the career field I was looking into,” Inusah said. “They were so eager to help me and get me connected with the right people who made sure that I knew what I was stepping into and allowed me to be successful in landing this internship.”
Outside of business, consulting and creative design, Inusah is involved in ServeState, a community-service organization at Penn State that partners with local organizations to coordinate Penn State students as volunteers for various service events. Inusah served as the president of the organization during her third year and remains an active member today.
This is the sixth in a series of stories about Liberal Arts students participating in Chapel Executive Internships this summer. Students interested in applying for a Chapel Executive Internship for spring should apply by the Dec. 1 deadline through the Liberal Arts Career Enrichment Network.