Tesla internship gives MBA student experience to leverage

Rutgers MBA Spencer Donihi-Goddard was boarding a plane with his fiancée in Austin last spring when he learned that he had been chosen for a summer internship position at Tesla.

“I was super happy,” Donihi-Goddard recalled, although he said he couldn't really celebrate until the flight landed in New Jersey. “Once I told my classmates, I felt good,” he said. “Everyone was supportive and really happy for me.”

It was a sweet win for Donihi-Goddard who decided to do a Full-Time MBA at Rutgers Business School as a way of transitioning into the corporate world after six years in the Army. “I knew the transition wouldn’t be seamless,” he said, “and I thought an MBA would add value to the management experience I gained in the service.” 

Donihi-Goddard said getting a summer internship was rewarding after “all the work” he put in with Dean Vera, assistant dean and director of the MBA Career Management Office, on mock interviews and the effort he made in his classes. He was determined to make the mid-way point of the program count. Tesla was among dozens of companies that received his resume.

Vera said Donihi-Goddard’s determination paid off. “Tesla is a sought-after company,” he said. “The fact that he was selected for an internship speaks to his strong candidacy.”

A native of California, Donihi-Goddard joined the Army two months after high school, hoping to find some direction and put himself on a more meaningful path. The Army trained him to be a helicopter electrician, and he built his service career in aviation maintenance, rising to the rank of sergeant and gaining responsibility for both maintenance managing and quality assurance.

“The service gave me a lot of different things. It gave me a strong work ethic and mentors. It changed my perspective on life,” he said. While he was in the Army, Donihi-Goddard “chipped away” at an online college degree while working full time. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Phoenix in 2023. His area of study in the MBA program is supply chain management.

At Tesla, he’s working in operations at a manufacturing plant in Nevada, where he’s tackling one project after another to help increase efficiencies. The work includes incorporating Lean 6 principles. “I want to get as much experience as I can while I’m here so I can leverage it to move into a manufacturing operations role in a tech or pharma company,” he said.

Vera said he always tells students the best scenario for them is to land an internship with a company that treats it as a pipeline, with the experience leading to a full-time job offer. The second-best situation is to have a strong internship that allows them to learn more about the career path they want and leverage that during their full-time job search in the second semester.

“I’m convinced Tesla is the springboard to Spencer’s full-time job search,” he said.

-Susan Todd