At the end of my senior year of High School, I assumed a larger role at Fuel America — Grove Street where I expanded from my previous role of working as a barista primarily to working in a position that came with more responsibility and creative work, as well as a strict emphasis on the business day-to-day administrative tasks of the shop. Broadly, I work within the sectors of business operations and brand partnerships, and continue to help improve the business’s growth and build off of my previous information technology and systems coordinations and implementations. More specifically, I have helped the shop’s managers with event coordination and planning, assisted in research and outreach to local brands for collaboration with the store, have helped ameliorate the leadership team’s work flow by creating easy-to-use and navigate excel sheets for inventory control, network information, and document storage, developed the IT ecosystem within the shop, and help manage finances and receivables of the business.

While also being a full-time student, I opted to work within an extension of my family’s businesses, Café Neelu (dba. Fuel America - Coffee House). I worked on the weekends, later shifts during weekdays, and at special events. Fuel America is a franchisee of the American Coffee House Fuel America. At Fuel America (on Grove Street), the shop is located in a bustling part of the up-and-coming city of Worcester, MA, the café serves as a haven for cultural events and entertainment, premium food, beverage options, and more, and an overall inviting and invigorating environment. These events that are hosted at the shop are inclusive of but not limited to: business, cultural, and themed/fun events (such as movie nights, paint nights, and more). Whether that be hosting exciting new experiences, providing an amazing space to create and/or reconnect with friends and family, or offering the best quality products and services, Café Neelu’s Fuel America Grove Street coffee shop is all about fueling you up with energy, being innovative, and having fun. I took on a wide variety of different tasks including: preparing food, pastries, beverage options, etc., working to actively optimize inventory control to minimize and resolve food waste, and also providing premium customer service to elevate relationships and experiences built within the store. In addition to these coffee shop-specific tasks, I have also administered several technological implementations—moreover, I conducted drone videography for marketing purposes to increase awareness and impressions of the shop, configured several networks that I divided accordingly (as per their intended purposes such as administrative monitoring, encrypted public patron network, employee only network, and a devices network), I also set up three televisions, and configured four speakers. Through this work experience, I have grown in my communication, leadership, customer service, and Information Technology/Systems skills.

After my initial experience with working in my family's business, my interest and desire to continue working and helping the businesses only grew. I began to take on a larger role following the Summer of 2021, and worked specifically within the lines of Project Management and Information Technology. I have directed and assisted with storage room management throughout the large commercial real estate buildings, handled distribution of pay stubs for all specific branches of the company, worked on new and innovative ways to digitally market the business through creating social media accounts, updating website, and more, and have administered IT-tasks and managed various technological domains for each branch of the company. I also still help with IT-related questions and problems as needed. Through these incredible one-off experiences, I have drastically grown in my leadership, creativity, project management, communication, technology implementation, and organization skills. I have developed an entrepreneurial mindset and have contributed many different ideas to conversations and hope to continue to use the skills and knowledge I have gained in my future endeavors.

During the summer of 2021, I gained my first hands-on exposure to my family's business through an internship-like experience. Family Grounds, Inc. is a C-Corporation that overlooks a variety of different business ventures including the managing of several large commercial real estate buildings in Worcester, MA, a 6,000+ sq. ft. long-term care facility pharmacy, franchising; specifically of a brand new Fuel America - Coffee House, active onsite construction, and is responsible for the holding of other businesses. During my time working at Family Grounds in the summer of 2021, I was tasked with a wide-range of different jobs; I worked to improve the work-flow and technological infrastructure within the corporate level of the company through overseeing and performing the construction of hand-built desktops for the Chief Operating Officer and Accountant / Bookkeeper. I also actively collaborated with the CEO, COO, and CFO on specific business plans and business expansion, engaged in meetings and discussed future business endeavors as well possible pursuable ventures, and learned complex business strategies for furthered development and growth / profit projections. I also shadowed at the executive level to gain a better understanding of what this feels like. Through this experience, I honed many of my skills, and also learned a plethora of new knowledge. I was able to grasp what it feels like to be an entrepreneur and what really goes into the success of a business. Through this experience, I bettered in my communication, creativity, leadership, organization, project management, and problem-solving skills.