Assembling a Company
Building a business isn’t as easy as building big-box furniture, but serial entrepreneur, Army vet and two-time UW alumnus Steve Buchanan has an advantage via his partnership with UW Tacoma.
Meet the Interns
During the summer of 2023, four UW Tacoma students and one recent alumnus held paid internships with TDY Rentals, helping founder Steve Buchanan scale the business up. These were intense positions, with high expectations on all sides. The interns were able to enrich their classroom learning with real-world experience, and gain invaluable insights into the dynamics of how an organization is developed, such as team-building, goal-setting and risk assessment. Internships like these are one of a number of high-impact practices that can improve educational outcomes for students who engage with them.
Emilia Ganchorre is a sophomore and, as such, has not yet declared a major, but is leaning toward something in the School of Urban Studies. For TDY Rentals, she produced and edited marketing videos, designed advertising campaigns and managed the customer database.
Previous education and experiences: Associate of Applied Technology in aviation maintenance from Clover Park Technical College. Student Lead with Teenflight Puyallup. Student Ambassador with UW Tacoma First Generation program. Eagle Scout with Boy Scouts of America.
Quote: “All of my ambition has basically been squandered by people saying ‘You can’t do that.’ At TDY Rentals, I learned I actually do have independence. Like David Bowie said, it’s not about how much time you have, but what you do with your life.”
Miya Thomas is a senior in business administration with a minor in business analytics. For her TDY Rentals internship, she focused on operations and logistics.
Previous education and experiences: Transfer student to UW Tacoma, with an Associate of Arts from Pierce College Puyallup. Also did coursework at WSU in English language and literature. Earned almost a dozen credentials in revenue operations, email marketing, sales management, supply chain management and project management.
Quote: “Through TDY Rentals, I’ve learned the importance of work culture. What I’ve learned from my business classes is, find a good work culture because you won’t last long if it isn’t. I like to be organizing and creating workflows that help our team be faster and better at everything.”
Carlos Manrique graduated with a B.S. in computer science and systems in spring 2023. He served as TDY Rentals’ web developer, doing things like building an online tool that allows customers to see what their budget for rental could be based on the location and dates of their TDY.
Previous education and experiences: Transfer student from Tacoma Community College, with an A.S. in computer science. Born in Peru; came to U.S. in 2017. As a student staff member at UW Tacoma Library, he received a UW Libraries scholarship.
Quote: “I would like to invest money back in Peru. People hear South America and all they think about is delinquency and drugs. But Peru is actually very stable and is very low cost compared to other places.”
Lien Vu is in her second year of the master of science in accounting program in UW Tacoma’s Milgard School of Business. At TDY Rentals, she worked on data entry, financial reports, budgeting, payroll, taxes, bookkeeping software and confidentiality.
Previous education and experience: Undergraduate degree in finance from Oslo’s BI Norwegian Business School.
Quote: “I love to experience a steep learning curve. I decided to switch from finance to accounting, and to study in the U.S., and I applied to just one school, UW Tacoma. I want to challenge myself. I really look out for the next challenging opportunity.”
Brynn Zehnder is a senior working on a bachelor of science in information technology. At TDY Rentals, she focused on the user experience, aka UX design.
Previous education and experience: She got her associate’s degree from Pierce College via Washington’s Running Start program, which allows high school students to earn college credit while still in high school. She was a golfer in high school.
Quote: “This internship is stressful, but its good stress. We work on a lot of projects at once, but we can see the impact of them. We can see the effect on traffic to the website, and we can see what people like and what they don’t like. That’s what UX is all about.”