Technology Consulting
IN THE Global Community
Summer 2026
STUDENT STORIES
Sruti Bapatla, MechE, BME & Music Performance '26
Sruti worked with the Palau Human Resources team to create a Power BI dashboard for the most frequently requested information.
This experience has taught me that consulting involves so much more than building a technical solution. Because the project scope was not fully defined at the beginning, I learned to ask probing questions, understand existing procedures, and determine what information would actually be useful to the HR team. Seeing the reporting dashboard take shape, and integrating the users' feedback showed me the benefits of a custom tailored solution. By automating reporting and standardizing the process, the department can spend less time on repetitive work and more time supporting government employees.
Olivia Brown, MISM BIDA 16 '26
Olivia worked with the Palau Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) to replatform their existing software from an unsupported version of Microsoft Access to a normalized PostgreSQL relational schema to improve analytical capabilities of the FIU and provide a more reliable foundation for further technological improvements.
Building a new data system for the Palau Financial Intelligence Unit showed me how important it is to balance flexibility, reliability, and sustainability. Creating an application from scratch offered more control, but it also meant thinking carefully about what the FIU could maintain after I left. Training and documentation was critical to long term usage of the platform.
By the end of the project, I had established a development process using PostgreSQL, GitHub Actions, and Docker that made it possible to deploy updates quickly and consistently. Outside of work, joining local pickleball, paddling, diving, and community activities showed me how welcoming and connected Palauan life can be.
Rachel Cheng, Civil Engineering & EPP '28
Rachel worked with the Palau Foreign Investment Board (FIB) to create a new portal for foreign investors to submit their proposals and for FIB employees to access and review those submissions.
Arriving in Palau meant adjusting to a place that felt very different from the metropolitan environments I knew. I was excited to experience the country’s natural beauty while learning how to navigate cultural differences with openness and respect. That combination of discovery and adaptation shaped how I approached the summer.
Johnny Gallick and Jarrett Huang helped the Majuro Stevedore & Terminal Co. in the Marshall Islands migrate to a new cloud-based database platform. They created automated security gate logs, daily sales reports, demurrage calculations, and the delivery schedule within the new platform.
Johnny Gallick, International Relations & Political Science '28
This project taught me that understanding an organization must come before choosing or building its technology. Language differences, scheduling challenges, and varied staff experiences meant that we needed many conversations and follow-up questions to understand how work was actually being done. That research helped the client make an informed decision to adopt a new system. Once we began building, the process became highly collaborative: we demonstrated each module, listened to feedback, and refined it. Seeing the client’s excitement about the mobile interface confirmed that the solution responded to real operational needs.
Living in Majuro also gave me opportunities to connect through music, including performing with local musicians and learning about Marshallese musical culture.
Jarrett Huang, IS '28
Working in Majuro showed me how essential the stevedoring terminal is to daily life on an island that depends heavily on imported goods. Our project digitized cargo tracking, security-gate records, and transportation-fee calculations that had previously relied on paper. Adapting to a more flexible work culture and coordinating around staff schedules required patience, but it also taught me to use my time differently. As each new page of the database system came together, I could see our progress more clearly and understand how the completed solution could help the terminal operate more efficiently.
Vidushi Srivastava and Sophie Zhang worked with the Cook Islands Financial Intelligence Unit to enhance their use of the TAIPAN financial intelligence system. They developed a way to link a person across all transaction records, built a model that proactively flags risky profiles, and restored the unit’s highest-volume bank reporting pipeline after Microsoft discontinued a legacy authentication service.
Vidushi Srivastava, MISM BIDA 16 '26
My experience with the Cook Islands Financial Intelligence Unit reinforced that the most sophisticated solution is not always the most sustainable one. We initially explored advanced approaches, but the organization’s data and infrastructure constraints led us to focus on models that were transparent, interpretable, and maintainable by the local team. We created realistic synthetic financial data, an account-holder dashboard, and a proactive system for flagging suspicious activity—an approach the FIU had not used in more than two decades.
Presenting our findings to the FIU board and AUSTRAC was especially rewarding. The work demonstrated how thoughtful technical foundations can help an organization move from reacting to reported activity toward identifying risk proactively.
Sophie Zhang, StatML '28
This project taught me that real-world development is a continuous cycle of building, discovering problems, cleaning data, and refining the solution. Small issues and unexpected edge cases often took longer than planned, but resolving them made the final system stronger. I also learned that consulting is not about arriving with all the answers. It means working alongside the client, explaining decisions, and ensuring that the people who inherit the system can maintain it.
Seeing our dashboards and machine-learning flagging model help the FIU investigate individuals more efficiently—and receiving positive feedback from AUSTRAC—showed me that our work could benefit not only the Cook Islands, but other financial intelligence units across the Pacific.