Georgia MBDA Business Center Students – Where are they Now: Songee Baker

Earlier this year, we produced a series of articles focusing on how your group can employ student workers by utilizing the resources provided by the Georgia Tech Career Center. If you were not able to read those articles, make sure to check them out on our blog. To show you that we practice what we preach, this week, we will be highlighting some of the students that have worked with our centers over the past few years and where they are today.

Songee Baker

            Songee graduated from Georgia Tech in 2015 with a B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in IT Management. Songee first began working with the Georgia MBDA Business Center her sophomore year and continued with us through her graduation in 2015. As a student intern, Songee’s work focused on database and IT client management that the Center would eventually implement. This work would eventually follow Songee into a career of database marketing and management. After five years of working, Songee has recently returned to the classroom and is pursuing a full-time MBA from the University of Notre Dame set to graduate in 2022. Songee will be working as an MBA intern with Abbott Nutrition over summer 2021.

In her time at Georgia Tech, Songee was the featured baton twirler, known as the Golden Girl, on the Georgia Tech Dance Team and would perform at halftime during Georgia Tech Football Games. Songee was also a writer for the Georgia Tech student newspaper, The Technique, and also held a number of positions within the Alpha Phi sorority.

Below is what Songee had to say about working with the Centers:

How would you describe the atmosphere within the Georgia MBDA Business Center?

The atmosphere at the Center was wonderful. I’d come into the office every day and chat with Jocelyn at the front desk. It was a really great and a supportive atmosphere. They took us to the Back to Business Conference every year that the mayor would host at the Atlanta State Capitol. That was an awesome experience to have as a student – to be there and speak with prospective clients about what the Center did, it was an experience that you couldn’t get anywhere else. The group trusted us with so much that was super fundamental to my career afterwards… I even had the opportunity to to be a part of the interview process and ask questions to my future boss.

Are there any projects from your time as a student assistant that you’re particularly proud of?

The project I worked on was setting up a more robust, searchable client database  – one of my favorite projects. I was assigned to check the physical client contracts. I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but it was figuring out which of our clients would be eligible for certain government offerings and projects based on company and industry code. I remember saying that we didn’t have a robust digital way to track these codes. I asked if we had a system that I could use to upload this information and make it searchable. Which was an opportunity for improvement and through this project I had my first experience with database management, seeing how to set up a database effectively.

How did working for the Georgia MBDA Business Center contribute to your undergraduate career at Georgia Tech and your professional career after graduating?

After graduation, I went into database marketing, and I’ve worked at Disney Studios, Viking Cruises, as well as Guitar Center. I remember in my first set of interviews I was able to talk about the work that I did at the Center. My work with the Center really helped me bridge the gap between what I was learning in school and the real world to see how concepts from my database management class and my sequel class applied to real life. All this work was also in a way that wasn’t super high pressure, and Donna and the team were super supportive. Of the work that I did there, the database project was a huge thing that contributed to the work that I did both at the Business Center and my career afterwards.

I also keep in touch with Donna, and I have used her as a professional reference. It was also just the connections to the genuine, professional, and authentic people at the Center that has played a strong role in my professional career and my undergraduate career. Like I said earlier, the autonomy that we were given as student interns to do real work was amazing. I remember sitting in my interviews for full-time jobs and being able to talk about real, tangible work experience which is what people wanted.