Name: Meryl Federman

Internship Company: FilmNation

Title: Strategy and Business Development Intern

What did you do before Stern?
Finance at Araca Merchandise, a theater merchandise company

What were your responsibilities?
Box office analysis of independent releases based on per-theater averages

What was your most memorable experience over the summer?
At FilmNation, the MBAs present their final presentation to the whole company including the CEO. It was amazing to get that opportunity, and getting positive feedback was incredible - I will certainly remember that for a long time!

What drew you to this company and role?
FilmNation is what I think of as "medium size," basically not a one-person production house minishop, but also not a massive studio or network. This means that you get exposure to lots of different departments, but access to a big company doing lots of great projects!

What experiences (if any) helped prepare you for this internship?
My experience doing financial analysis and working in Excel were a great help, there's definitely a lot of data to deal with in Business Development! If you have Powerpoint work under your belt, that helps too, though I had to learn a lot of that in the pressure cooker with my supervisors over the summer!

How did you spend your time preparing for recruiting and interviews?
I networked a lot, and used the LA and NYC treks (obviously, the NYC trek to FilmNation was very informative for me, and I reached out afterwards).

Movie/TV recommendations:
So many! I really love The Handmaid's Tale, of course, and The Good Fight is also great for a slightly more uplifting TV show about women. Recently, I saw and loved Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.