My First Week as THE Pink Petro Intern

Written by:

Puja Javalagi

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Hi there!  My name is Puja Javalagi and I am honored to announce that I am Pink Petro's first ever intern. 

I am a student at The Honors College at the University of Houston (go coogs!) and am studying petroleum engineering. I love my university and the opportunities they give me to grow and excel. Pursuing a relationship with Pink Petro was all with the hopes of making my university a better place for women wanting to be in the energy industry.

As a student in the Cullen College of Engineering, I am surrounded by motivated students and all knowing professors. However, in the first few months it was clear to me that many of these people that I saw every day were men. As a woman studying in the STEM field, I was warned that this would be the case, but I was blind to it until I saw the gender gap growing as my classes got harder. This is one of the reasons I reached out to Pink Petro. I believe in our mission to help close the gender gap. I believe in our mission to connect this strong community in order to create an engaged and empowered work force. Through this internship, I make it my mission to help achieve these goals in any way that I can.

My first day as an intern was nothing like I expected.

I was all ready to go into work and start attacking any task thrown at me. Instead, I was told to go back home, get dressed, and be ready for a meeting and cocktail hour at the Women in Energy Investment Conference, put on by the very talented Lindsay Burton. This was not what I was prepared for. I didn't even do my hair coming into work!

So, I spent my afternoon driving back home and getting ready in a frenzy, trying to look professional, but mostly just trying to make a good impression on my first day. It was a glimpse into the busy and committed life that my boss, Ms. Mehnert, lives daily. She made everything look so easy and was nothing but helpful to me and everyone we met that day. I got the opportunity to hear about upcoming potential products as well as new start ups that were taking shape. I got to see first hand how having a platform for women to support other women was so crucial. The KAYO Cocktail Hour gave me the chance to see many accomplished women discussing their worries, goals, and new ventures with one another while still having fun in each other's company.

In this position, I get to tackle some of the challenges that some of you may have using the community.

Katie thought to put me in this role to leverage my skills and your inputs to make this a better community for all of us. While a lot of us young people pride ourselves on working well with technology, it can still get confusing.

So here's my call-out to all of you!  

David Feldman and I will be putting together some explainer videos.  We will also be listening to your feedback about how we can make the community easier to navigate. We'll be pulling together a few scenarios this summer to create these videos so we can help enhance your experience.

Well, this week has already been crazy, but I can't wait to get the ball rolling on an exciting summer!

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