Game On: Booz Allen Intern Challenge Returns in 2021

In a typical Booz Allen Summer Games challenge, carefully selected interns collaborate side by side 8 hours a day for 10 weeks and showcase their final projects in a series of leadership-facing presentations. The top teams are then selected to present at the Challenge Cup in a venue like the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. 

The COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt pause to this in-person collaboration. In 2020, Booz Allen canceled the Games out of social distancing requirements and concern for participants’ health and safety. 

In 2021, however, the Summer Games returned—in an all-virtual format for the first time ever. Equipped with Summer Games backpacks, water bottles, and t-shirts shipped to their homes, 103 interns from San Antonio, San Diego, Huntsville, and beyond tackled projects, learned about work and life at Booz Allen, and connected with mentors, subject matter experts, and each other.

“From speed networking and virtual game nights to Webex collaboration and presentations, we used our collective ingenuity to bring the Summer Games online, for the same fun, intense, and competitive experience we’ve been delivering since 2014,” said Booz Allen Executive Vice President Aimee George Leary. She helped judge this year’s final projects along with Executive Vice President Brian Abbe, Senior Vice President Michele Hintz, Senior Vice President Dr. Roman Salasznyk, and Executive Vice President Bill Schuler. 

The Summer Games finale—the Challenge Cup—was also held virtually for the first time, with the final five teams out of 26 total showcasing their winning solutions. Highlights follow from their experiences this summer. 

Since the program’s inception in 2014, Summer Games teams have developed real-world solutions that address challenges in areas such as public transportation, NextGen communications, clinical research, and more. 

“It is difficult to solve the world’s large issues, like climate change and poverty, without first having a place to start. That’s why a lot of people our age can become discouraged,” said Rishabh Mehta, a member of the 2021 winning team who’s studying business and information systems at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

The Summer Games program offers that starting point. It connects interns with specific areas of interest to peers with different, but complementary, backgrounds based on the requirements of the project at hand—all to create cross-functional teams, much like the real business units at Booz Allen. Over a 10-week period, teams with four to five members ideate, develop, and pitch a prototype solution that develops capabilities, improves processes, or promotes social good.

“To address these problems, you first need to understand how you can have an impact and set small, attainable goals in your specific niche to ‘fill in those cracks,’” Mehta said. “Each of us, with four different backgrounds, brought a unique perspective towards problem solving. We set checkpoints and put in a great deal of effort. Before we knew it, we had a successful product with real-life implications.” 

Sabrina Eichenberger, a computer science major at Purdue University, described her team’s winning project, an open-source intelligence tool, as “a website monitor to protect open source information from malicious web traffic.”

“More and more, the threats the nation experiences are in the cyber landscape,” said team member Chris Stine, who’s studying computer science and finance at the College of William and Mary.

“Adversaries want to see what U.S. companies are creating, what they're shipping, how their operations work, and all other kinds of information that, published separately, means very little. But brought together, it can paint a clear and potentially damaging picture,” said team member Melissa Shohet, who is simultaneously pursuing a bachelor’s and master’s of science in applied mathematics and statistics at Johns Hopkins University.

“In the beginning, our team of interns knew nothing about web signatures, open-source intelligence, managed attribution, or browser fingerprinting, which is how to track browsers without using cookies or trackers simply by using the unchangeable attributes of a device,” Shohet said.

For guidance along the way, teams worked with challenge leaders who “went out of their way to introduce us to other people at Booz Allen and get feedback on our project,” said Eichenberger.

“The most rewarding part of the Summer Games program was, by far, the people,” Mehta said. “With backgrounds ranging from government and military to science and technology, those we interacted with were able to provide such unique perspectives to everything they did: from work to life itself.” 

By the end of the virtual Summer Games, the interns had developed stronger problem-solving skills and a clearer vision for the future—both for themselves and how to approach the world’s toughest challenges.

“Despite being completely online, this is by far the best internship I have ever, ever had,” Shohet said.

Read more about the Summer Games and about opportunities for university talent at Booz Allen.