Osamah Qatanani ’21.5

Kountable, Inc., San Francisco, CA

The summer of 2020 was unlike any other that anybody has experienced before. While the pandemic has essentially uprooted the typical in-person workspace, many companies have had to make massive changes to the way they operate. While I felt that my internship experience would be negatively affected, that did not turn out to be the case.

I had the opportunity to work as a Business Development & Marketing Intern at Kountable. I worked under an awesome Williams alumnus, Chris Hale ’00, though primarily reported to his colleague and the company co-founder, Catherine Normura. Under Catherine, I worked on a wide range of projects all the way from product design to content creation and marketing. The other interns and I arrived at Kountable at a very interesting time in which they were preparing to introduce a brand-new product. While I worked on most facets of the product, I slowly began to find my place in marketing, particularly social media and email campaigns.

My internship was incredibly useful in that I exposed myself to a brand-new field, one in which I had never really delved into before. Interestingly enough, though, this was something I had learned about in my economics classes. What Kountable does essentially is fill the trade gap both within developing economies and with other economic markets by providing resources, both financial and material, in order to allow contracts and transactions to succeed that would not have otherwise. Thus, learning about the economic concepts then actually seeing them in the real world was rewarding. Consequently, this experience has definitely influenced some of my future course selections. A question I am beginning to ask myself in terms of my courses is “which classes will have the most relevant applications when I am working in the future?” This is perhaps more relevant in my economics course selection than it is in other majors, but the inspiration is still there.

I would like to not only thank Chris and Catherine at Kountable, and the Class of 1966; I would like to thank all the ASIP sponsors for making these internship experiences feasible. For me, I am able to engage in opportunities that matter to me most and may have the biggest impact on my future career. Again, thank you to all those who made this possible.