Charlie is a law student who participated in Career Israel in the summer of 2019. He interned at the Organization for Refuge, Asylum & Migration (ORAM) as a research assistant. Throughout his internship, he was able to learn a lot about the refugee system in Israel while gaining valuable research experience. This internship allowed him to develop personally and professionally for his future endeavors. His favorite place he visited throughout the summer was the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of the holiest religious sites. His recommendations for future participants is to “be prepared to adapt to new challenges and take everything in stride”. ORAM’s mission is to enable the international community to protect vulnerable refugees including the LGBTI community and asylum seekers working closely with governments of refugee receiving and transit countries.

Her most memorable experience throughout her program with Israel Experience was meeting new people and exploring different sites throughout the country. Her advice for future participants is to “travel, explore and have fun!”. Peretz Architecture has a very diverse skill-set specializing in residential buildings, private homes, interior design, green architecture, urban renewal, planning & urban design, and architectural lighting design. This firm has created and implemented a wide range of projects throughout Israel and on an international level. With such a diverse skill-set, Peretz Architecture gives customers the ability to create a vision while they handle the rest.

This internship gave Cannon valuable research experience for his future endeavors. As his first time traveling to a foreign country, his most memorable experience in Israel was traveling throughout the country on his weekends off. One recommendation he has future participants is “Travel lightly and go on all of the trips you can. Also, don’t be afraid to plan your own trips to places that are not on the list of destinations for the event trips”. While interning at Tel Aviv University as an aerospace research assistant, the intern has the opportunity to work in the experimental laboratory running experiments, recording data, doing data analysis, and creating reports. The intern will work in the turbulence structure laboratory- directly with fluid mechanics and heat transfer in complex flows.

He was a Programming Intern at OnCourse, working directly with technology experts, helping set up different systems within their online platform. Throughout his internship, he worked on a variety of different tasks and was given the responsibility of working on projects that really impacted the company. “I like how hands-on it is. I am assigned real tasks that affect the outcome of the company. This internship has given me invaluable experience”. One of Alex’s favorite memories throughout his summer program with Career Israel was the off-roading on the day trip to the south with the rest of the Career Israel participants.

My current employer, Deloitte, supported me in pursuing my dreams and gave me the opportunity to take a sabbatical from the Washington, DC office’s Risk and Financial Advisory practice and work in the Tel Aviv office’s Human Capital consulting practice for my Career Israel internship. Deloitte’s Tel Aviv office opened my eyes to the global consulting market and allowed me to gain hands-on experience in Human Capital consulting, which was a department that I started gaining interest in about six months prior to the program. The experience I gained working in my “internship” in Tel Aviv enabled me to return to my home office in DC and be offered a senior role on a Human Capital engagement as well as supported my official transfer request into Deloitte’s Human Capital consulting department.

As a well known global company, I knew that SodaStream would give me the career boost I was looking for from an internship, and my lack of Hebrew knowledge would not be a total hindrance to my success. What I didn’t know, however, was how much I would love interning. From day 1, I was in the lab making syrups, and felt like a real member of the team. I had as much responsibility as my 2 senior coworkers and my boss trusted me to do things on my own. There is no hand holding in Israel! I learned so much in 4 very short months as a food engineering intern and really found a place and passion. I realized how valuable I was as a team member and to always believe in my skills.

What I didn’t really realize before I left was that I was embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. As a participant in the program, I got to live with and develop amazing friendships with young Jews from around the world – our group of forty came from America, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, England, South Africa, Russia and Australia. We traveled together all over the place, with program trips to the north and south, and to the Dead Sea and Jerusalem. Because of the length of the program, we had more time to travel off the beaten path and settle into the rhythm of life in Tel Aviv. Every holiday was an amazing new experience – I was there for Purim, Passover, Shavuot, and Israel’s 70th birthday, which was incredible. Through Career Israel, I had an extremely special and moving experience on Yom HaShoah, when we attended the national ceremony at Yad Vashem, and on Yom Hazikaron, when we attended a ceremony with thousands of other Masa participants from different programs.