Chahat Walia '28 (Finance) Finance Insights and Data Analyst Intern

Chahat Walia '28 (Finance) was a Finance Insights and Data Analyst Intern at Roche Tissue Diagnostics in Oro Valley, AZ

What was the process for getting this internship, job, or summer experience?

Landing the Finance Insights & Data Analyst internship at Roche wasn't a straight line. It was less "aced one interview" and more "networked like it was a part time job." I reached out to people constantly, but never with an agenda. I wasn't trying to extract a referral, I was genuinely curious how people ended up doing what they do, and that curiosity is what actually opened doors. If your only question in a coffee chat is something you could've Googled in thirty seconds, you've wasted both your time and theirs. I tried to show up with questions that proved I'd done the homework, the kind that made people go "oh, they actually looked into this." The interview itself taught me the most underrated lesson of the whole process: don't undersell yourself, don't oversell yourself, just BE YOU! Trying to perform a version of yourself you think they want is exhausting, and it shows. The version of me that got the offer was the same version that showed up weirdly excited about Healthcare sector and asked follow-up questions instead of reciting a script. And none of it happened alone. I leaned on advisors, professors, and peers at every step, for resume feedback, mock interviews, or just a reality check when I was spiraling about an application. Take as much help as you can get!! Nobody does this solo, and pretending you have to is the fastest way to make the process harder than it needs to be.

Tell us about your internship.

My favorite part of the day honestly wasn't even work-related; it was the people. We had a cohort of 36 interns spread across totally different departments, and hanging out with them, hearing what finance looked like compared to R&D or marketing or supply chain, gave me a much bigger picture of the company than my own desk ever could. It also kept me sane. Nothing resets your brain after a rough model run like complaining about it over lunch with someone who has zero context and infinite sympathy.

The work itself came with an unexpected side quest into M&A. I wasn't involved in the actual deal, but I had the opportunity to learn directly from people who were, Roche's $1.05B acquisition of PathAI, an AI digital pathology company. That kind of access teaches you things you can't just Google, the real reasoning behind a deal, not the press release version. I got curious enough about it that I ended up making a one page deal pitch summary afterward, not because anyone asked me to, but because writing it forced me to actually tie everything together instead of letting it stay scattered in my head. It's still something I go back to.

The big project was Post Launch Monitoring, a tool built to challenge assumptions after the fact. Whenever a business case gets launched, it's built on a stack of assumptions, revenue, COGS, sales volume, and those assumptions almost never hold up exactly as planned. The point of the tool was to actually go back and check, did the numbers we projected match what happened, and if not, why not. I built the model using some of the technical skills I'd been developing, but the bigger goal was making sure it wasn't just a "summer intern project" that got shelved in September. It was something the team could keep using to hold future business cases accountable, which felt like actual value add rather than busywork with my name on it.

How did Eller prepare you for this internship and any advice for other students?

Eller made me more confident before I even realized I needed it. All those networking events, club meetings, and mixers I showed up to without a clear agenda quietly built the muscle of walking into a room of strangers and just talking to people. By the time I got to Roche, that wasn't a new skill I had to learn on the fly, it was already second nature.

My advice to other students is simple: SHOW UP. Show up to the networking event even if you don't know why you're going. Show up to the club meeting, the informal mixer, the group study session, all of it. You don't need a specific goal walking in. Half the value is just being in the room and letting the conversation take you somewhere you didn't plan for.

The biggest surprise for me was realizing how different the real world actually is from anything school prepares you for in theory. Classes teach you frameworks, but they can't fully simulate a room full of people who have real deadlines and real consequences riding on what you build. That's exactly why doing an internship while you're still in school matters so much. The stakes are lower than they'll ever be again, but the experience you walk away with is just as high. It's the best possible place to be wrong for the first time.