6:00am | According to representatives from California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), after competing against nearly 1,300 applicants from some of the top MBA programs in the country, a second-year graduate student has been selected for a prestigious summer internship with The Gallup Company.
 
Lucy Craig, who is studying toward master’s degrees in both business administration and theatre management at CSULB, will spend eight weeks at the company’s Chicago offices as a client development intern.  She begins the internship June 4.
 
“I was exhausted and astonished and couldn’t quite believe I was selected for the internship,” said Craig, who is originally from the United Kingdom (UK) but has lived in Long Beach for 12 years and holds dual citizenship between America and the UK.  “I still have to pinch myself.”
 
Craig “was exhausted” because of the grueling application process, which she noted involved hours of online aptitude testing and metrics.  It also included four interviews during CSULB’s semester break, culminating with a six-hour gauntlet-style interview in Chicago.
 
She said there were apparently 1,297 applicants who were recruited from the top 12 business schools in the country.  They didn’t recruit at CSULB, but Craig said she was lucky enough to wrangle an invitation from a recruiter through a contact of Alaine Weiss, a career counselor in CSULB’s Career Development Center.
 
“Whilst looking for a company to intern with, I researched hundreds of companies and I fell in love with the Gallup company when I read their mission: ‘Creating positive change throughout the world,’” Craig pointed out.  “They flew 27 of us to the final (interview) round in Chicago, and it turns out that I won a face-off against students from some of the best schools in the country, including Harvard, Stanford, (Northwestern University’s) Kellogg and Duke.”
 
As a client development consultant, Craig will learn more about The Gallup Company and how it advances the business of its clients every day.  Through project-based work, she will partner with Gallup client teams to contribute her thinking and support the delivery of consulting solutions to the company’s clients.
 
“The position I have been offered, that of client development consultant, is pretty much my dream job.  So, I will be working with the Gallup scientists and their Fortune 500 clients to come up with solutions to their business problems,” she explained.  “During my internship, I hope to learn the business of consulting and prepare myself for a career with Gallup.”
 
Craig earned her first master’s degree (with honors)  in 2000 at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where she double majored in theatre and film and television with minors in political science, English language and information technology.
 
She is very involved with the CSULB campus community.  She is also director of marketing and communications for the California Repertory Company, CSULB’s graduate theatre arts company, and assistant general manager at KBEACH student radio, where she specializes in outreach and community relations.  She also serves as president of the university’s MBA Association, a Senator-at-Large for Athletics in ASI, Inc., and host of “Art Attack,” a weekly arts talk show on KBEACH.
 
“It never ceases to amaze me how much attending Cal State Long Beach has changed my life, and I am thrilled at the incredible experience that being at this school has provided me,” said Craig, who expects to finish her graduate studies at CSULB in spring 2013.  “I eagerly look forward to the next 15 months that I will spend here. The future is bright indeed.”