Wheaton Scholar Builds Skills at USTA

Andru Anderson, a junior Scholar at Wheaton College, was looking to build workplace skills when he heard about an internship opening from a fellow Posse Scholar.

“He told me what a great opportunity it would be, especially as a business major,” Andru says.

The conversation led to a summer working with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) in their Diversity and Inclusion Internship Program at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, New York.

A double major in business management and anthropology, Andru was placed in the ticket operations department, where he improved his customer relations and administrative skills.

As a Career Program partner since 2013, USTA has hosted five Posse Scholars as interns. USTA interns attend weekly “lunch and learn” workshops focusing on professional development, including topics such as difficult interactions, workplace communication skills and creative problem-solving.

In addition to his day-to-day responsibilities, Andru worked on a collaborative group project with USTA interns across three locations, where they took findings from individual departments and applied them in a larger context. His group’s research project focused on improving recruitment and retention of diverse millennials at the USTA.

“It was a personal topic to me, as a person of color,” says Andru. “We did extensive research to identify the top desires and preferred working environments of diverse millennials, and what makes them stay at a job.”

Andru credits the Posse network for connecting him to the professional opportunity.

“The Posse magic is real,” he says. “I had a unique internship, something very few people have the privilege to experience.”

Now back on campus at Wheaton, Andru is a head resident advisor, an assistant in the anthropology department, and an advisor helping freshmen acclimate to college life. After last summer at USTA, he is also thinking even more about giving back to his Posse peers.

“I want to continue to use my networking skills and my personal experiences to help the Posse Scholars that come after me,” he says.