Partners For Entrepreneurial Leadership

Partners for Entrepreneurial Leadership (PEL), a division of the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Association, is a financial assistance program sponsored by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship that offers summer internship subsidies for students working for a startup that cannot compensate them at a typical market rate.

PEL is designed to help level the playing field for students who want to take a chance to work for a startup for the summer.

To apply for the program, students are encouraged to do the following:

• Identify a start-up (not your own) with which you want to intern for the summer. The entrepreneur and student mutually structure an offer that includes MBA-level internship responsibilities and some form of compensation. Opportunities to network with entrepreneurs and source these internships are available through BEA events, including Ideas@Cal and the Entrepreneurs Roundtable.
• The Entrepreneurs Association will send out an email to all members in the Spring semester to invite them to apply for the program. Selection is based on the opportunity, level of compensation, and learning potential of the project. Funds will be distributed over the summer.
• After the completion of the internship, students are expected to write up a brief case based on their summer experiences.

Previous PEL interns have worked on projects that range from customer acquisition and search engine optimization to sophisticated business and financial planning.

Please contact us if you are interested in PEL.