When Conor Churchill presented a dashboard he built during his summer internship at American Express, he expected it would help his team better understand intercompany transactions in Canada.
He didn’t expect it to attract interest beyond his own team.
Churchill, HBA ’26 and an MSc ’26 candidate, said his vice-president told him the dashboard could potentially be rolled out to other markets.
“It felt really cool to hear that a dashboard I created as an intern to help the team in Canada has the opportunity to help teams in other countries,” he said.
Churchill was among the Ivey MSc in Management: Business Analytics students who spent the summer applying what they learned in class through the Ivey Analytics Internship, a full-time work-integrated learning experience through Ivey Career Management.
This year’s internships spanned a wide range of industries and functions. Four MSc ’26 candidates – Churchill, Devanshi Joshi, Matthew Baker, and Peter Peng – shared their experiences.
Conor Churchill helps teams spot trends at American Express
Churchill spent the summer as a finance intern on American Express’s Canadian controllership team. His main project was a dashboard built with Power Query and Power BI to help the team analyze trends in intercompany transactions related to the company’s Canadian operations.
In addition to the dashboard, Churchill created a custom GPT in ChatGPT to help the team maintain and use it, collaborated with other interns on a project exploring how American Express could increase acquisition among younger consumers, and supported the team with other analytical tasks. He said he especially enjoyed learning Power BI and building a tool from scratch.
Through the internship, he also saw how global companies operate.
“I learned a lot about how banking is regulated in Canada and the reporting requirements that are associated with that,” he said. “I also learned how large, global companies operate in different markets and have to adapt their operations to local regulations.”
Churchill also connected with colleagues through coffee chats and had an in-person conversation with a C-suite executive from New York.
Devanshi Joshi learns to solve the right problem at Bruce Power
At Bruce Power, Devanshi Joshi spent the summer as a Summer Development Student on the Advanced Analytics and Tech Innovation team, supporting the company’s Major Component Replacement program, a large-scale infrastructure renewal initiative. Her role ranged from data visualization and predictive analysis to AI enablement, but one of her biggest lessons came from talking with teams, understanding how they worked, and figuring out how a solution would actually be used.
That focus shaped much of her summer. In addition to data visualization, Power BI reporting, and predictive analysis through a machine-learning classification model, she supported AI enablement by developing agentic AI solutions for engineers’ technical, role-specific tasks and exploring applications for Microsoft Copilot. She also created standardized “What Excellence Looks Like” guides to help teams use AI more consistently and effectively.
“One of my biggest takeaways was the importance of really understanding the problem before trying to solve it,” Joshi said.
She said the experience taught her to spend more time asking questions, understanding what users need, and thinking about how a solution will be used before trying to build it.
“It taught me that in a real business environment, a strong idea is only one part of what makes a solution successful,” she said. “You have to consider different stakeholders, existing processes, timelines, and how a change will fit into the way people already work.”
One of the highlights of the summer was a tour of the Bruce Power station. She visited the simulator – a full replica of the control room – and operators explained how they would respond to different scenarios, including a loss of grid power.
“Knowing that Bruce Power supplies a significant portion of Ontario’s electricity made that experience even more meaningful and put into perspective the responsibility that comes with operating the station,” she said.
Matthew Baker brings a technical background to real estate
Matthew Baker brought a computer science background to his summer internship with Sifton Properties Limited, where he worked with the company’s neighbourhood developments team. One of his biggest projects was a Python-based intelligence tool that scanned real estate news, municipal planning agendas and minutes, and Statistics Canada data. The project later pushed him to think more carefully about whether a technical solution is practical for others to maintain and use.
Alongside that project, Baker conducted comparative market analyses, prepared information packages for home builders, and researched technologies and software that could support the team. What stayed with him most was realizing that even a strong technical solution has limited value if a team cannot easily maintain it after it is built.
“I now ask myself important questions before I start working, such as, ‘Who’s going to maintain this? How do we make sure the team actually adopts this change? Is this idea really worth implementing?’” he said.
The internship was also Baker’s first experience in an office after previously working in retail. He said the MSc program helped him build the people and professional skills needed to work in a business setting.
“I found that the program helped me be a much better communicator,” he said. “My professors at Ivey stressed the idea that we need to keep our audience in mind when communicating, and I've found that very useful throughout my internship.”
Peter Peng applies analytics to client challenges
At Dig Insights, a Toronto-based consumer insights and market research consultancy, Peter Peng worked with survey data to help clients better understand their customers, markets, and growth opportunities. The experience showed him that strong consulting work is not just about producing accurate analysis, but about identifying what matters most and turning it into recommendations clients can actually use.
“One of my biggest takeaways was that strong consulting work is not simply about producing accurate analysis,” Peng said. “It’s about understanding the client’s underlying business challenge, determining which findings truly matter, and communicating those findings in a way that leads to action.”
He said the work was also less predictable than a classroom case. Clients might begin with a broad question, incomplete data, or competing stakeholder priorities, so he had to adjust his analysis as projects evolved and find ways to make his recommendations both useful and realistic.
“The most technically sophisticated answer is not always the most valuable one,” he said. “The best recommendation is often the one that is clear, actionable, and aligned with the client’s objectives.”
Peng said the program gave him a strong base for client-facing work. Courses in statistics, data analysis, operations, strategy, and finance gave him a technical foundation, while the case method taught him to work with incomplete information, identify the central issue, and defend a recommendation.
Peng also valued the opportunity to get to know his colleagues at Dig Insights.
“I realized that the people around me were not only talented professionals, but also genuinely supportive and approachable individuals who wanted me to succeed,” he said. “After that, I felt much more comfortable asking questions, sharing ideas, and being myself at work.”
