The second-year class of Business Fellows studied in Australia, traveled through Vietnam and completed internships in Singapore as part of a signature global experience in the program.
When Carly McDermott ’28 left for the spring semester, studying in Australia and working in Singapore still felt hard to imagine.
“I was always told going abroad would change you as a person, but I never knew that feeling was real,” said McDermott, a marketing and international business major from Newburyport, Mass. “If you had asked me three years ago where I thought I’d be, studying in Australia and working in Singapore would have never crossed my mind.”
This spring, the second-year class in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business’s Business Fellows program studied abroad together through a new Asia-Pacific semester experience. The program began with coursework in Sydney, Australia, continued with a week in Vietnam and concluded with full-time internships in Singapore.
In Sydney, students took courses in management, marketing, operations and supply chain, and Australian life and culture. They then traveled to Vietnam for company meetings, lectures from local faculty and cultural activities before beginning internship placements in Singapore through Global Academic Ventures.
For McDermott, the semester’s first weeks in Australia helped her build confidence in unfamiliar settings.
“By immersing myself in the culture, I found an increase in my confidence levels,” McDermott said. “I became more independent, more willing to take risks and more open-minded in situations that once would have felt daunting.”
Her internship in Singapore also challenged her expectations. McDermott expected more content creation work, but her early assignments focused on writing scripts for a developing podcast.
“I learned that not every professional experience will fit perfectly into my expectations, and growth often comes from the assignments that challenge me the most,” McDermott said.
Eli Karpas ’28, a finance major from Houston, Texas, chose the program because he wanted to explore a part of the world he had never experienced.
“I chose this program because I wanted to explore Asia, a new area of the world I’ve never been to,” Karpas said.
While in Australia, Karpas said he embraced the daily rhythm of Sydney, from morning runs along Bondi Beach to afternoons at beachside cafes after class. The semester also gave him opportunities to travel beyond Sydney, including Fiji, Tasmania and New Zealand.
“I didn’t expect there to be so many opportunities to travel outside of Sydney,” Karpas said.
In Singapore, Karpas worked as an investment analyst at a boutique private advisory firm.
“I was thrown into real work from day one,” Karpas said. “I reviewed and created pitch decks for fund managers, built market maps, wrote about global events affecting private markets and attended a conference on artificial intelligence in the workforce.”
Olivia Gover ’28, a marketing major from Stamford, Conn., said her internship helped her better understand cross-cultural communication. Working with colleagues from a variety of cultural and professional backgrounds, she learned how strongly workplace communication depends on patience, curiosity and mutual understanding.
“Not only was I able to build a deeper connection with the people I work with, but I also gained new global knowledge,” Gover said.
Some of that learning happened in everyday moments. Coworkers taught her local expressions, shared food during lunch and asked questions about life in the United States.
“This showed me how a well-rounded work environment requires mutual understanding of one another, allowing relationships to build,” Gover said.
For Parker Forgash ’28, an entrepreneurship major from Laguna Beach, Calif., the internship showed him the difference between classroom confidence and professional readiness.
“There was a version of me from before this semester who thought he was pretty prepared,” Forgash said. “He had taken the finance courses, written the case studies, and could talk about markets with enough fluency to feel confident in a classroom.”
That confidence was tested when Forgash received an open-ended research assignment early in his internship. With no template and a real deadline, he had to analyze unfamiliar markets, organize his findings and work through uncertainty.
“Delivering that report was the first moment I felt like I was actually contributing something real, not just completing an assignment for a grade,” Forgash said.
By the end of the semester, the experience had changed how students understood themselves as learners and future professionals.
“If I were sitting in an interview, I would want an employer to know that I am someone who can easily adapt, communicate effectively, and be placed outside my comfort zone,” McDermott said. “This abroad experience has shaped me as a student today and the professional I hope to become.”
Business Fellows visit the Sydney Opera House during the Australia portion of their semester abroad
Business Fellows visit an elephant sanctuary
Business Fellows explore Sydney
Business Fellows visit Hobbiton in New Zealand
