Internship Spotlight: Andrew Orlik, Western Alliance Bank

Andrew Orlik '23 BSBA (Finance) was an Intern at Western Alliance Bank in Tucson, AZ.

Tell us a little bit about how you landed the internship:

LinkedIn was the main reason I was able to land this internship. I found an opening at Western Alliance and researched the company to get a feel for the company culture. It looked like a great place to get work experience, so I revised my resume and cover letter, submitted my application, and practiced for the interview when the time came.

What was your favorite part of the internship?

The best part was the positive work environment and having the chance to network with the other interns. WAB really cares about their interns and planned numerous events for us to get together and enjoy our time outside of work hours. The exceedingly positive work environment motivated me to get out of bed every day and made me look forward to going to work.

What are a few things you learned?

All banks have three lines of defense. The first line consists of business units that engage in revenue generating activities such as deposit operations and lending. The second line consists of independent risk management departments such as Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) and Financial Crimes Compliance (FCC). The third line is the internal audit department, which performs independent testing of the company’s internal controls system. I worked with the Enterprise Risk Management team, which oversees the management of all business risks across the entire enterprise. Despite being a smaller bank, WAB has thousands of risks, and each risk has its own specific control for managing each risk. WAB recently merged with AmeriHome Mortgage, meaning that the bank is now subject to changing risk management regulations. I helped the ERM department with their GRC Initiative, which is WAB’s new system for managing risks and controls more efficiently and accurately.

How did Eller prepare you for your internship?

I couldn’t have gotten this internship without the help from all my Eller professors! I was taught effective presentation practices and professionalism techniques in my Eller core classes like BCOM 314 which helped me to excel in my interview. On top of that, my earlier classes and clubs such as BNAD 200 and Eller ELITE taught me how to create the perfect resume and cover letter, which helped me to stand out in the application process.