It’s a Chimed Life™: Meet Chime’s 2024 summer interns.

This summer, we’re hosting 38 interns from 10 fields of study and 30 campuses. We sat down with three members of this year’s impactful group to learn about them, their studies, and their experience at Chime^Ⓡ. Read on to meet Angelique, Erin, and Russell.

“Since I can remember, I’ve always been interested in tech,” says Angelique Phillips, a rising senior at the University of Michigan. “After designing a product for a national chatbot competition, I fell in love with how coding allows you to turn creative ideas into tangible products.”

Angelique has been familiar with Chime for a while now—from seeing ads on TV to having friends with a Chime card, she’s had an eye on the company. “When I saw the job posting for an internship, I applied right away,” she says. “At a mid-sized company, I knew I would have an opportunity to create impact here as an intern—and gain invaluable experience.”

As a software engineering intern, Angelique is part of the Personalization team, which helps various cross-functional partners find groups in Chime’s member database. Part of her focus is working on a new integration for the team, which is set to launch during her internship. “I’m excited because I’ll be at Chime when we launch and present to the company,” she says.

One of the highlights of her internship has been how welcoming the team has been. “We recently had our on-site, which, after seeing a lot of our team over Zoom, was really nice to connect in person,” Angelique says. The team went on a scavenger hunt designed to help them understand what it’s like to be underbanked: They were sent out with a check and the goal of using it to buy a gift—without the use of their phones or their own banks. “It was really eye-opening to see what our members might feel if they couldn’t use Chime,” Angelique says.

In the year ahead, Angelique looks forward to graduating and transitioning into her professional life. “I’m excited to see how my experiences working with new technologies at Chime will help with my schoolwork,” she says. “This internship has given me so much experience and insight into what being a software engineer is like. I think I’ll even translate sprint planning into how I tackle my homework moving forward! The whole experience has set me up well for what’s to come.”

“My parents immigrated from Korea, and seeing them work hourly jobs and start their own businesses led me to pursue a more “stable” career,” explains Erin Lee. “I decided to pursue higher education, and accounting was an interesting path—I figured CPAs would always be in high demand and the financial stability would come with it.”

After five and a half years working at PricewaterhouseCooper, Erin realized that she didn’t see herself in the turnaround and restructuring space long term. “Through my work experience, I found it really rewarding to advise companies in situations of distress,” she says. “I decided to go back to school to get my MBA to round out my business acumen by taking on leadership roles and taking more qualitative business courses.” Erin is now entering her final year pursuing an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

When she saw several Chime ads, Erin decided to look into the company more. “I honestly didn’t see myself going into fintech, but I fell in love with Chime’s mission,” she says. She applied for an internship and has spent the summer as a Program Manager on the OMX team. “Going into my internship, I wanted to round out my quantitative background with qualitative knowledge of strategy and operations,” she says.

In her role at Chime, Erin has been working on a project assessing Chime’s dispute intake form. “It’s been a huge learning curve—I’ve never worked in-house or in fintech,” she says. “I’ve been given the tools I need to be successful, and my teammates have been willing to help at every step of the way.”

Erin’s favorite part of her Chime internship experience is the people. “There are people on the Operations and Member Experience (OMX) team who realized I’m an intern and put time on my calendar to be a resource to me,” she says. “The culture at Chime is so kind and supportive, and I’ve realized how much I value that in the workplace.”

Russell Leong is an international student from Singapore who came to the U.S. in 2017 to study economics. Since then, he’s moved on from his original plan to be a financial analyst and become an entrepreneur, co-founding HUGS, a startup that helps undergraduate and graduate students find housing. “The deeper I’ve gotten into startup life, the more I realized that I want to be an operator and improve my technical skills,” Russell says. “That’s what led me to pursue my MBA at Babson.” In his time at Babson—which is known for its support of serial entrepreneurs—Russell has enjoyed the supportive environment, small classes, and diversity of the people around him.

While watching a basketball game, Russell first saw the Chime logo (we are the jersey sponsor for the team). He looked into Chime, saw an opening on LinkedIn, and applied. “Chime stood out to me because of three things,” he says. “One: Our products have an impact beyond Silicon Valley and the work we do matters. Two: There’s a sense of humility about Chime; we don’t claim to know what’s best, and we lean on our community to inform us—like in the Chime in for Changemakers program. And three: The values, people, and culture struck me as unique, and they have lived up to my initial impressions. Everyone I’ve met has been generous with their time and mentorship.”

In his internship, Russell has been working on the Operations and Member Experience (OMX) Operations Enablement team putting together a handbook on reporting and staying compliant with the many regulations Chime must adhere to. His work has also included running a retrospective on a relatively new OMX program, understanding the program’s progress, opportunities for improvement, achievements, and its impact on Chime. “I’ve been talking to many senior stakeholders about the program to understand the work it’s done over the past six months and am excited to present at the OMX All Hands in August,” he says.

If Russell’s internship had to be summed up in one word, it would be ‘osmosis’: “I’ve been absorbing so much knowledge just by being around my team,” he says. “I’ve loved being in an environment with passionate, competent, high-performing people who are skilled at what they do and are amazing people managers. I’ve also seen how things are done efficiently at a growing tech company.”

In the year ahead, Russell looks forward to tightening up his technical skills and graduating. “Coming out of Chime I have a new level of confidence in executing, expanded networking skills, and a deeper understanding of the tech industry,” he says. “I’ll be using those learnings in how I interact with people, do my schoolwork, and move into any venture I embark upon.”