Helena Uusiku

Acknowledgement

The internship opportunity I had with Credit Suisse was a great chance for learning and professional development; therefore I would love to extend my appreciation to the following people: B360 team and their supporters, my mentor Bettina Rötzer and her entire team, my host mother Bettina Löw and her family, my internship coordinator Enzy Kaura, the International Relation Officer at Namibia University of Science and Technology Nico Smith, my beautiful daughter Esperanza Negumbo (my source of strength) as well as my family and friends for their support during this journey. If it was not for each one of them, I wouldn’t have made it this far.

Host Family

A little confession: before coming to Switzerland, I had so many doubts and mixed feelings about the family I was going to stay with. I asked myself questions such as "How is the family relationship going to unfold considering our different backgrounds?" But upon arriving, I was welcomed with joy and happiness as a new member of the family and I started to feel at home right away. I was blessed to live in a beautiful and happy family of Bettina Löw with her beautiful kids namely Felicia and Valentin. My host family helped me to overcome the culture shock I had upon my arrival, they taught me a lot about Swiss culture and how to go about from one place to another using public transport. It is because of them I got a chance to visit new places in Switzerland and some of the neighboring country like Germany and France. They taught me different types of sports; my favorites ones being tennis and bowling. I can actually write a book about my host family but in short, for me this was HOME AWAY FROM HOME.

Work experience

I had the opportunity to do my internship with Credit Suisse at Recruitment & Development in the Leadership Development team headed by Bettina Rötzer. On my first day at Credit Suisse I was welcomed with a lunch with my mentor. Getting at the office I received a bouquet of beautiful roses, chocolates plus a card with nice welcoming messages from each member of the team. I was given an introductory program outlining all the activities I had to do and appointments with all the other employees to get to know each other and their tasks. This really helped me to get to know and interact with people easily and quickly. There were moments I thought to myself: “What am I going to bring at the table? The team is only having qualified and experienced personnel and I was just a an intern from varsity.” However, this immediately changed since everyone was always ready to assist and help me whenever possible and they did not regard me as a student but as a Credit Suisse employee and a member of the team. I was always given the chance to participate or say something in team meetings, and this really helped me to increase my level of confidence and communication skills. I got a chance to translate my theoretical learning into practical application, a chance to know and understand the trainer job and all the preparations to be done before delivering trainings or seminars and overall, I now have an overview of how things are done in a working environment. I also got a chance to know and work with people from different teams in other projects. I learned a lot in a short period of time. I will use this exposure to build my career in the field of Human Resources Management as well as in my personal life. Overall I also experienced the importance of volunteering and that one does not always has to do something for someone and expect monetary values in return.

My Pride

Having a mentor who believed in me and the team that always supported me; as B360 intern I am proud to say that: I have designed an eLearning for the Mandatory Management Excellence program on the Roles of Leadership and this will be used for all the Managers who will be joining or taking up a managerial role in Credit Suisse. I also researched, revised, updated and designed the Mentoring documents (Both Mentee and Mentor) to be uploaded on the Credit Suisse intranet. These documents will be used by all Credit Suisse employees who will be entering into a Mentoring Relationship.

Finally, all I can say is that my experience in Switzerland was MARVELLOUS!