Dominic Laiosa (CDS‘26)

Internship

Billing Operations (Finance Department), Liberty Mutual Insurance

Tell us about your internship.

As a Data Analyst intern at Liberty Mutual on the Billing Operations team, I am responsible for analyzing customer support chat data to pinpoint the most frequently asked questions and identify areas where representatives need additional training. I have spent the majority of my time finding ways to automate labeling these conversations. This mainly involves creating functions to manipulate data frames in python and also experimenting with Natural Language Processing.

What are you enjoying most about this experience?

Seeing how much data an enormous, global company like Liberty Mutual has and how they are utilizing it to guide their business has been extremely interesting to me. Data science drives numerous parts of the business, and it has been very exciting to see. I’ve also really enjoyed working on a team, learning more about the business, and gaining industry experience.

What CDS courses prepared you for the internship role? Please explain.

Courses like DS110 "Introduction to Data Science with Python" and the DS120-122 "Foundations of Data Science" progression have been instrumental in preparing me for my role at Liberty. They provided me with foundational coding skills in Python and introduced me to several machine learning concepts that I am now applying in my internship. Working with PowerBI in DS310 has also helped me understand and develop dashboards that my team will hopefully use in the future.

How did you find and obtain this internship?

I believe I found this internship on LinkedIn or Handshake. I applied through one of those websites and then got a call from a recruiter a couple weeks later where he asked me broad questions about myself and my resume. A week or so after that, I had a more intense three-hour-long interview, which consisted of three different parts: a behavioral interview, a case interview, and then a one-on-one with an employee who is currently in the rotational program that the internship feeds to.

What tips would you offer other CDS majors to help with the internship search?

I would advise other CDS majors to apply anywhere and everywhere in their internship search, regardless of whether it is a specific position they want. All experience is good experience, and where you work now does not directly translate to the position you may hold in five to 10 years.

Aside from that, I would say reach out to people whom you have a relationship with and see how they can help or if they know of certain programs you should apply to. There is no harm in asking, and the worst that can happen is they say, “No, I don’t know of any data science programs,” and then you continue to apply as you have been.

And if you don’t feel like you have relationships with someone who could potentially help, then start trying to build them. Ask one of your professors or someone in the data science department to talk about what they did before coming to Boston University. The majority of them have worked in industry and could tell you a ton about what their job entailed, what they have learned, and what drives their success.

But make sure you reach out to these people with intention and with a desire to learn. If you go in with the attitude that if you talk to this person then you can ask him for a referral or you can apply to this job, then chances are it won’t work out or your intentions will be obvious to the person you are talking to. Reach out to learn and develop, and naturally the referrals and job opportunities will follow.

Any other comments about the internship and your experiences?

Thus far, my internship has been both challenging and rewarding, helping me bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and real-world application. Each day brings new learning opportunities, and I’m continually impressed by how much data these companies possess.

There seems to be a statistic for every part of the business, and it has been extremely interesting learning how Liberty utilizes these stats to drive performance. Overall, my time at Liberty Mutual has been awesome so far, and I am super excited to see what the remainder of the summer has in store!