Intern Spotlight Series: Introducing Caleb Holland, Luke Balkema, Chad Bernstein and Tyler Barlow

We eagerly anticipate the arrival of our summer interns each year. As we keep our intern spotlight series going, this week we are excited to introduce to you our new interns Caleb Holland, Luke Balkema, Chad Bernstein, and Tyler Barlow. We are delighted to have them join us and share their inspirations, interests, and goals for this internship.

Caleb Holland

Caleb will be a senior in the fall at Radford University. He is from Roanoke Virginia and will work out of our Salem, Virginia office with the IT department. Through this internship, Caleb hopes to gain experience in the industry and working in a team as well as improve his software engineering and data science skills.

Caleb was introduced to Intact at a career fair at his university. “Listening to employees speaking well of the company of their own volitation speaks volumes on how the company treats their employees,” he says. Moreover, after speaking with the employees, he noticed “they seemed very competent in their fields of work” he adds.

If Caleb could go anywhere in the world, he would love to visit France or the Netherlands. While visiting these countries, he does not plan on staying anywhere long and would prefer to keep moving around. “Exploring a country over the course of a month would be neat,” he says. The last book that Caleb read was An Illustrated Guide to Bad Arguments, a book on critical thinking by Ali Almossawi. 

Luke Balkema

Luke is from Channahon, Illinois and has lived there since he was four years old. Luke will be a senior in the fall at Taylor University in Indiana. This summer he will be working remotely and assisting our IT department.

Throughout this internship, Taylor is looking forward to learning what it is like to be on a team of professionals and learning what they do to stay organized and work together. In addition to learning more about testing code and what the best way to solve errors is, he hopes to see how his work this summer will positively affect the productivity of the company,

When asked what attracted him to Intact, he tells us that an internship where he can watch a team build something was important to him. “Intact was the first company that I saw that was doing this and I wanted to be a part of it” he says. As a dual major, studying Business management and computer science, “It would be fun to see how the insurance side of the company works as well as the software department” he adds.

Luke is a huge fan of Siesta Key in Florida. If he could travel anywhere, he would choose Siesta Key since “it has the second-best rated beach in the United States” and he always travels here for spring break as he “loves to have fun in the sun.” The most recent television series Luke watched was Dune. “I think it is fun how some writers create some crazy worlds, yet the storytelling is so good it almost feels more realistic than fiction” he says. Luke was also a major fan of Star Wars back in the day.

Chad Bernstein

Chad is from Winthrop, Massachusetts and has lived here his whole life. Staying local to home, Chad will be a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in the fall. This summer Chad is hoping to improve his technical and professional skills while working in a real-world setting. “I also would love to get to know people in my field which I hope to enter after graduation” he notes.

Chad has joined our IT department. “Intact’s extensive global presence across multiple markets attracted me to the company” he tells us. Throughout this internship, Chad is thrilled to “get the opportunity to work with a diverse team” and hopes to stay with Intact when he graduates next year.

We asked Chad what movies interest him and he tells us the most recent movie he saw was Dune on HBO Max. He was a big fan of this science fiction film and cannot wait to see the second movie which is coming out later this year. It has always been a dream of Chad’s to travel to Norway to see the Northern Lights and go whale watching.

Tyler Barlow

We welcomed Tyler to our IT department in Virginia. Tyler grew up in Richmond and is currently living in Mineral, Virginia. Staying local, Tyler is a senior at Brightpoint Community College. We asked Tyler what he is hoping to gain out of this internship. “I hope to gain real world experience in the IT/Software field as well as form relationships with managers and co-workers” he tells us.

Tyler was attracted to Intact for several reasons. Specifically, he was drawn to the fact that his skills align very well with the technologies used by Intact. In addition to this, he was attracted to “the opportunity for professional growth” as well as “the opportunity to contribute to Intact’s success” he says.

A big fan of horror, the last television show he watched was Love, Death & Robots on Netflix. If Tyler could travel anywhere in the world, he would love to visit Japan or Germany sometime in the future.

Best of luck Caleb, Luke, Chad, and Tyler! We look forward to working with you and being a part of your career development.