KennyS

Kenny Sulaimon ’16
Innovator

Providence native and Talent Development Program participant Kenny Sulaimon has hit an enviable stride.

His major, mechanical engineering, no longer seems as daunting as it once did: “I’ve worked through my hard general courses,” he says. “Now I can focus on what interests me, robotics and electrical systems, so I actually want to study.”

The work world ahead also seems more approachable, thanks to his summer 2014 internship at Visa’s Colorado data center, which turned out to hold unexpected similarities to working at the URI mail room: “We were making sure the system keeps running,” he says. “I had top clearance. I was giving tours by the end.”

By the end, he had also placed in the top three in an intern challenge to come up with a new commercial application for Visa using emerging technology. His idea: an app store for payment widgets.

So for this summer’s internship, he’s thinking Silicon Valley—or maybe Visa, which wants him back. It’s pretty much all good, because there’s one thing he won’t have to worry about come graduation: resume padding.

—Pippa Jack