By Doovaraha Maheswarasarma
As a digital product summer analyst at the Center for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) in London and an engineering essentials fellow at Goldman Sachs in New York, Dhvani Khakhar pursued her dream of professionally working in the corporate world of finance over the summer 2020, remotely while she lived in Dubai. Working at two different time zones, Khakhar made the most out of available opportunities during the pandemic.
CFTE is a global online education platform for professionals working in the finance industry. From April to September 2020, as a product intern, Khakhar was directly involved in curating courses like Open Banking, RegTech and FinTech Foundation 2.0, with industry experts from around the world. Blessed with immensely supportive mentors at CFTE, she was made to take lead on some of the projects herself. Her diverse set of tasks ranged from leading discussions of curriculum design between industry professionals and the product team to brainstorming the best products that the company could offer.
As a junior majoring in computer engineering and minoring in economics, Khakhar also got to explore the crossroads between her two fields of study via her two-month-long fellowship with Goldman Sachs in New York over the course of the summer. It was a training program where she was mentored firsthand by software engineers at GS to prepare for coding interviews required to land an internship at the firm. She also got the opportunity to network with vice presidents across GS via the virtual lunch meetings as part of the fellowship, which happened to be virtual midnight-snack meetings for Khakhar due to the time difference.
Spending her weekdays working at the internship and her nights at the engineering essentials fellowship, Khakhar is an example of NYUAD student resilience in the face of current realities.
The Career Development Center at NYU Abu Dhabi works with students to help improve interpersonal skills, find internship and job opportunities, and prepare for graduate school.