Meet Brian Lee: Q&A With an Illumio Finance Intern

‍In this ongoing series, get to know Illumio’s 2024 summer interns from across the org.  

We’re excited to spotlight the largest intern class in Illumio’s history! This summer, interns from across disciplines joined the Illumio team at our Sunnyvale, California headquarters for three months of career prep.  

This month, we sat down with Brian Lee, a Finance Analyst intern at Illumio. Brian shared insights about his role on Illumio’s Finance team, the challenges he faced with new projects, and the valuable career lessons he learned during his internship.

Q: How did your perception of working in tech change throughout your internship?

Being in tech, I’ve learned that things move quickly. Illumio has a fast-paced work environment, and everyone is busy and committed to their projects. You have to stay on top of your work to keep up.  

Seeing my coworkers’ commitment has definitely encouraged me to be more proactive and adaptable. It’s inspiring to see that level of dedication from my team and other employees here. It also made me realize how much potential Illumio has to grow in the future while being in a fast and changing market.

Q: What's a skill or practice you learned this summer that you're excited to use after your Illumio experience?

I chose to apply to Illumio because the Finance Analyst role description aligned with the type of real-world work experience I wanted to get out of an internship. I didn’t want to just be stapling papers or fetching coffee all summer. At Illumio, I got to apply the finance and accounting skills I’ve learned in school and work on real projects that impacted the business.  

Almost every project I worked on involved Excel in some way, whether it was formatting reports, calculating financial metrics, or analyzing data with pivot tables. These were all skills I’d practiced in class, but I got a lot out of applying them to real projects at Illumio.  

I feel a lot more confident in my Excel abilities now which I know will be important for my future career. Going forward, I’m excited to keep building on the skills I learned at Illumio and use them in a full-time role after graduation.

Q: Is there a project that particularly challenged you? How did you overcome that challenge?

One specific project I’m really proud of was a discount analysis report. I worked closely with one of the accountants on the team who guided me on how to gather the necessary data and present it.  

I eventually presented the report to our CFO Anup Singh which was a bit intimidating at first. But Anup was easy to talk to, and I was proud of how well I understood the data and presented it. This experience really improved my presentation skills and gave me a lot more confidence.

Throughout my internship, I was also exposed to a lot of unfamiliar financial terminology specific to tech companies. It was a bit overwhelming at first. I asked a lot of questions to understand the meaning behind these terms and how they applied to my work.  

Everyone at Illumio was always happy to answer my questions and provide guidance. This helped me feel a lot more comfortable not just with the terminology but with collaborating with a team to get my questions answered.

Q: What was the best part about doing an in-person internship at the Illumio HQ?

The best part of my internship was being surrounded by people who are interested in the same career and subject that I am. I felt like a part of the Illumio Finance team, and I learned so much from everyone I worked with.

Although my internship was hybrid, I spent a lot of the summer working in person at the office. Commuting and being in the office gave me a better sense of what it’s like to work professionally. I think that’s an important part of the internship experience. It also gave me many more opportunities to meet new people and learn new things than I might’ve had if I worked remotely.

Interested in joining the team as an Illumio intern? Recruitment for next year will begin soon! Learn more about the Illumio Intern Program.