Isha Batra (Bus’25)
Intern, Deloitte
When it came to choosing where she wanted to study, Isha Batra picked CU Boulder in part because family is important to her, and the campus is close to her Erie home.
However, it’s worth noting that her entire family attended Colorado State, so the Batras are still getting used to having a Buff at home.
“I wanted to be independent and go farther away, but it really just came down to a reality check for me,” Isha said. “I love Boulder’s campus and I have so many close friends who went to Leeds—and everything I heard from them was always positive.”
So far, the fit has been perfect for Isha. As a first-year student, she landed a support role in the Office of Diversity Affairs, where she helps facilitate networking events and manage social media content for women’s programs. In the fall, she started a new role as a peer life coach for the Designing Your Leeds class.
“I think a lot of people don’t love that class, because it forces you to learn a different way of thinking,” she said. The course introduces design thinking—a unique problem-solving approach that’s new to most college students—“and oftentimes, there’s no one right answer. A lot of business students are used to the idea of a right answer. I really enjoy working with these students to help them understand that, but it’s also fun to look back on where I was a year ago and see how much I’ve changed in a short time.”
“To me, the word business means helping people. It was cool to see that come to life on my internship.”
Isha Batra (Bus’25)
Part of that change came from Isha landing a coveted internship with Deloitte last summer, thanks to her work at ODA. She and her roommate—both scholars in the Women’s Empowerment Initiative—attended an event on building a better LinkedIn profile because attendance was light, and she wound up meeting the two Deloitte recruiters running the presentation.
Encouraged to seek internships early
“As a freshman, an internship was never on my radar,” Isha said. “The school encourages you to go to career events early, but I was stuck in that mentality that internships are hard to get—especially as a freshman and especially at a Big Four company. It was a road that was terrifying to me at every step.”
Not only that, it was a long road, with five rounds of interviews. In the final round, she actually was turned down before the company specifically made room for a second Leeds intern so she could take part.
The discovery internship was broad, but gave her a chance to see the inner workings of the company and do real project work—including a project with United Way that aimed to solve the problem of food shortages in Maui, which hit home because she spends her summers surfing in Hawaii.
“To me, the word business means helping people,” Isha said. “It was cool to see that come to life on my internship.”
She’ll be returning to Deloitte this summer, where she’ll intern in its risk and financial advisory area, and while she isn’t sure what her future holds, “Leeds has me on the right track,” Isha said. “The structure and support I get is so beneficial for helping me think about what my career path might look like when I graduate.”