Capstone Summer Intern Conference - Day 2 Recap

It was an early start as I watched the still waking interns stumble into the Q Tower Dining Hall for breakfast. Before the conference stared up again, I met two interns, including Alex, who just graduated, is working in our Kansas City office, and told me about how she was preparing to start her Masters of Tax degree at DePaul in the fall, and Daniel from St. Bonaventure, who was working close to their home this summer in Cleveland. Both were highly engaged and energized to get another day started.

At 8AM, the conference got started again with some words from our Director of Talent Management and Recruiting, Ken Bansemer. Ken shared his wisdom by talking about taking control of your career by focusing on what you can influence, not what you can’t control, and by figuring out your personal assets and liabilities, and how they make up your equity characteristics. Following a group photo, the project teams reconvene for the balance of the morning to continue their work. Each team was assigned one of three themes and a means for presenting the results of the project (podcast, video, and live presentation). The teams got fast to work on defining the roles and responsibilities of each team member, and the concepts for what they will do and how they will do it.

After lunch, everyone comes back to the amphitheater to hear from our Chief HR Officer, Kimpa Moss, and our new company President, C.E. Andrews. Listening to Kimpa is always a treat as she spoke about the some of the core leadership competencies at McGladrey. It was an added bonus however to have our new President join us as well. He started in his new role on Monday and made the time to come out to St. Charles to participate in this event. Mr. Andrews backed up his participation with some inspiring words about why he decided to take on this new role, and where he hopes to take the firm in the future. He shared with us that he actually started his career at Arthur Andersen 35 years ago at The Q Center, with some courses in the same room that we were in. He also let the group know that he took his new role with McGladrey because he saw a lot of the same attributes here that appealed to him at Andersen, specifically McGladrey’s focus on people and their development. Kimpa and C.E. then took questions from the interns for over 40 minutes, with many excellent questions and insightful answers.

Following Kimpa and C.E., the teams reconnected for the rest of the afternoon to finish their projects. After dinner and some free time, it’s time to start to see the results of the project teams work. A faculty member (Jen Poklemka) and myself had the honor of emceeing the project team presentations, which we will continue to see through Wednesday. This is a competition BTW, and the early results are promising. The interns and faculty get to vote on each presentation, and the winners get rewarded at the end of the conference. The first set of presentations we saw were all entertaining and creative. More on that tomorrow.

A long day isn’t quite done yet though. The day ends with a Casino Night event inside the ballroom. It’s a fun night as faculty members like myself dealt out the cards, and the interns compete with chips to ultimately win raffle tickets that they will redeem tomorrow. The event wraps up at 10PM, and like Monday night, some retire, some continue the networking into the night. Be sure to check back again tomorrow for a recap of the final day of Capstone. In the meantime, look below for some pictures from Day 2.

Capstone Day 2