Student
Danny Akkad
“Attending Creighton definitely proved to me that there is a number of opportunities for students to excel, especially within the Heider College of Business,” the Omaha native says.
Internships are an integral part of a Heider College of Business education. Nearly all students work at least one internship during their four years at Creighton, and it’s not unusual to enter the workforce with multiple internship experiences.
But junior Danny Akkad has upped the internship ante, working two simultaneously, twice.
“I decided to work two internships at one time during school because I genuinely believe that to succeed you must do what others won’t and field any opportunities you can,” he says. “Having the ability to work two internships at once shows not only that you were able to successfully apply and interview for both but also that you had the dedication, work ethic and time management to juggle both.”
Currently, Akkad is a venture capital intern at Edge Case Capital Partners, a tech- and software-oriented angel investing firm in San Francisco, and a mergers and acquisitions intern at Green Plains, an Omaha ag-tech company.
This past summer, Akkad served as a financial analysis and private accounting intern with Nelnet and as a corporate finance intern at Union Pacific Railroad. He calls his summer a “warm up” for this fall, when he juggles work at Edge Case Capital and Green Plains with full-time school.
Akkad has embraced the adage, “All work and no play make Johnny (or Danny) a very dull boy.” He has enthusiastically made the most of college’s extracurricular pursuits as a Business Research Fellow with the Menard Family Institute for Economic Inquiry, a member of the Creighton Investment Banking Society and Beta Theta Pi, vice president of finance of the Lebanese and Syrian Middle Eastern Club, a diversity and inclusion executive for the Inter-fraternal Council, a decurion student teacher and participant in the Dean’s Honor Roll for Social Responsibility.
Akkad clearly believes internships are for everyone, not just juniors and seniors. If underclassmen want more than one or two real-life work experiences as an undergrad, they should use Handshake and start early, he says. All but one of his internships originated from the Handshake website.
The kind and dedicated faculty there helped me see the different opportunities that were realistic for my interests and standing, and helped me perfect my resume and cover letter.
— Danny Akkad
He also advocates spending time in the John P. Fahey Career Center.
“The kind and dedicated faculty there helped me see the different opportunities that were realistic for my interests and standing, and helped me perfect my resume and cover letter,” he says.
“They even gave me lists of contacts to reach out to along with networking tips.”
Additionally, Akkad says, it is important to submit job applications well in advance of deadlines.
Once a student completes an internship, others will follow more easily, he says. The first internship may not match one’s eventual career, but Akkad believes all experience is valuable experience.
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“I used my first internship (tax and audit public accounting internship with Frankel and Zacharia, LLC) to leverage more opportunities, which started to get closer and closer to what I was truly interested in,” he says. “Working different industries can give you a unique skillset and background.”
For someone who has excelled in business education, Akkad, ironically, entered Creighton intending to apply to medical school. Both his parents are in healthcare, so he naturally gravitated to a pre-med track, although within the Heider College of Business. However, his science courses failed to capture his imagination as his business classes did.
Although Akkad says he loved his accounting courses, he didn’t picture himself as a public accountant. After consulting upperclassmen who were pursuing finance degrees and taking a finance course the summer after his sophomore year, he settled on a double major in accounting and finance.
“I haven’t looked back since,” he says.
If a Heider College of Business education is “a journey towards finding your life’s work,” then a Creighton education is “the growth of yourself as a whole, through your spirit, mind and character,” says Akkad.
“Creighton has offered me a variety of opportunities to learn more about myself and what I want out of life,” he says. To those just starting their college years he adds, “Whatever you desire is right in front of you, waiting for you to take it. So, go out and take it!”
