By Summer Intern Madeleine Lessard

This summer, I had the opportunity to intern with the Pension Boards’ Investments team. It was truly an amazing experience, and I was able to learn so much about the organization and what it takes to be successful in investments.

The main project I was assigned to was helping to develop metrics that showed the impact of our new best-in-class Sustainable Balanced Fund on various environmental, social, and governance factors. I did so by analyzing our external investment managers and identifying their key portfolio exposures to different sustainability risks.

I also worked on developing a resource that communicates the importance of sustainable investments and how it will affect our members’ retirement savings in the short and long term. The investment team was wonderful to work with. They gave me a lot of opportunities to go about projects on my own while giving me needed support and knowledge to complete my tasks. Additionally, they gave me the opportunity to attend meetings with our various external managers, which really enabled me to learn about different investment strategies.

One of the best parts of the internship was coming into the office every week for the leadership roundtable sessions and listening to each department talk about what they do and their role within the organization. All interns were also given the opportunity to work on an organization-wide project, which we will present to the Board of Trustees at the end of the internship. This was an incredible project because we were able to learn so much from each other and the different departments we were all working with. The project allowed everyone to apply their strengths and skills to help contribute to one cohesive presentation of a final product.

The summer internship went by very fast, but I am so grateful to have learned so much from so many individuals at the organization and to have been able to work with such a wonderful group of people.