How Arity’s summer interns put the Arity Way into action

At Arity, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future. We help businesses navigate change, make smarter decisions, and uncover new opportunities through data and insights. Technology powers much of that work – but it’s our people who power that technology.

This summer, our intern cohort showed how curiosity, collaboration, and a willingness to challenge conventional thinking can create meaningful results. Interns across engineering, data science, customer success, sales, product, marketing, people and culture and other teams brought fresh perspectives, strong curiosity, and a genuine desire to make an impact.

As the summer concludes, we’d like to recognize and thank them for their contributions. During their time here, they embodied the Arity Way values: how we work together, challenge ourselves, focus on customers, and own results as one team; they reminded us why new ideas, diverse experiences, and a willingness to learn are essential ingredients for innovation.

Whether they were working with mobility data, customer insights, product experiences, or operations, our interns brought new perspectives to problems we tackle every day.

Our interns embodied the Arity Way values: how we work together, challenge ourselves, focus on customers, and own results as one team; they reminded us why new ideas, diverse experiences, and a willingness to learn are essential ingredients for innovation.

Stronger together

One of the tenets of the Arity Way is that we are stronger as a team. People with diverse experiences, bring different perspectives and skills to their work, helping teams solve problems more thoughtfully and effectively.

Our interns arrived with different educational backgrounds and perspectives – all of which supported their teams in different ways. Many interns realized they needed to supplement their existing skill sets, and this knowledge transfer benefitted the interns as well as the mentors.

“I learned a ton about GCP (Google Cloud Platform), especially the Google Agent Development Kit, and a variety of tools and techniques to work with big data,” said Christian Hirschey, our software engineering intern.

Sophia Xie, an experience design intern, said, “Through my internship, I got to work on a variety of projects that exposed me to new areas of design, like research, UI design, and also AI and design.”

What stood out wasn’t simply the work they delivered. It was how they delivered it: They listened, they asked thoughtful questions, they assumed positive intent, and they welcomed feedback. In doing so, they strengthened the teams around them and demonstrated the value of true collaboration.

Progress over perfection

Another Arity Way pillar is that we value continuous progress. We know that innovation is rarely linear. Sometimes it may feel like two steps forward and one step back.

Our interns approached their projects with that growth mindset. They remained resilient when projects became challenging and resourceful when faced with uncertainty. They showed that improvement isn’t always driven by major breakthroughs; often, it’s the result of consistent learning and small iterations that lead to forward momentum.

Here’s what our customer success intern Hamed Alwahadneh had to say: “I helped automate the publication of our key job and data quality metrics and contributed to consolidating our workflows into more centralized and maintainable solutions. This resulted in a huge reduction in manual monitoring efforts.” This illustrated how results could come from evolution, not just revolution; forward momentum came from consistent process improvement.

Christian Hirschey addressed technical debt on one of our key applications. He removed unnecessary dependencies and dead code to improve the application’s performance. “The result was significantly simpler and more maintainable, with a 60% reduction in code base size, 30% lower CPU utilization, 59% faster processing performance, and a whopping 75% reduction in infrastructure usage and cost.” Not all wins involve creating something net-new; they may take the form of refining what already exists.

The result was significantly simpler and more maintainable, with a 60% reduction in code base size, 30% lower CPU utilization, 59% faster processing performance, and a whopping 75% reduction in infrastructure usage and cost.

Although iterative work may be less visible than other tentpole projects, these interns and their teams understood the significance of improving existing processes and products. This iteration ultimately resulted in greater efficiency and effectiveness. That willingness to challenge the way things have been done is one example of how we work iteratively at Arity.

Keeping customers at the center

At Arity, we focus on customers. Everything we build ultimately serves a larger purpose: helping clients, partners, and end users make smarter decisions that improve outcomes. Our interns quickly learned that every project, regardless of scope, connects back to that goal.

For example, data analytics engineer intern Zackary Li’s project involved synthesizing data for our upcoming Annual Driving Behavior Report. He knew that presenting the data in a table format may overwhelm readers. He said, “[My data visualization work] is aimed at clearly demonstrating the robustness in Arity data to future customers.”

[My data visualization work] is aimed at clearly demonstrating the robustness in Arity data to future customers.

Software engineering intern Brandon Lichy focused on customers by adhering to an extensive review process. He said, “Getting more eyes to review your data is an important part in delivering accurate results to the customers.”

The connection between daily work and customer outcomes may not be immediately apparent. However, our interns’ consistent dedication to clarity, accuracy, and actionable insights demonstrates our commitment to customer results.

When we focus on customers, we prioritize what matters most. We align on outcomes rather than activities. And we create solutions that can help move industries forward.

Owning results together

Another tenet of the Arity Way is taking ownership for collective results. At Arity, success is not measured solely by individual achievements; it comes from teams working toward common goals and being accountable for the results. Our interns embraced that responsibility from day one.

Seneca Craven, an intern for the people team and the culture team, said, “This summer really allowed me to combine employee experience, data, AI, and community impact to really create solutions that helps employees feel more connected, supported, and empowered to grow.”

Our interns took accountability of their workstreams, they followed through on commitments, and they asked for help when needed and offered support when they could. Most importantly, they kept their eyes on the broader team context and organization objectives.

Whether contributing to engineering initiatives, supporting analytical research, improving operational processes, or helping teams solve business challenges, they approached their work with accountability and purpose.

Thank you to our interns

We designed our internship program to provide real-world experience in an innovative environment. What makes that experience valuable, however, isn’t simply the projects or technologies. It’s the people who choose to engage fully, learn continuously, and contribute with purpose.

To every Arity intern who joined us this year: thank you. Thank you for your curiosity, dedication, and willingness to roll up your sleeves and contribute.  Your fresh ideas and thoughtful questions challenged us to look at problems differently. Thank you for embracing collaboration, pursuing continuous learning, and truly owning the work.

Most importantly, thank you for helping us build a stronger Arity. We are grateful for your insights, impact, and accomplishments that collectively drove positive outcomes this summer. We can’t wait to see where your careers take you next.

Your contributions reminded us that the Arity Way is not just something we describe, it is something we practice through the way we learn, collaborate, serve customers, and deliver together.