Newsy Highlights 2018 Summer Games

“We designed a drone from scratch,” said Booz Allen Intern Robyn Kincade, a member of the winning team from Huntsville, AL. “It’s modular, tool less, snap-able, and super easy to put together. Everything is 3-D printable.”

The drone gets service members better intel— faster—when they are in the field.

The team concluded that the fastest way to get information into the hands of service members is to have them physically carry the drone, explained Intern Ryan Fernandez. “We had to make it lightweight.”

Every aspect of the drone was designed with practicality in mind.

“We wanted everything to be easy to assemble so it could be snapped together without tools,” said Intern Bradley Evans. “With the 3-D printing, if something breaks, it can be fixed by simply printing off a new part and then replacing it within the drone.”

Booz Allen professionals, across sectors and around the world, gave intern teams timely, complex challenges to solve. 

“We use crowdsourcing technologies to go out to all of our business leaders and ask them: What are the tough problems you’re trying to solve? Where could you use a team this summer to really make a dent on those problems?” said Booz Allen Talent Strategy Officer Aimee George Leary. 

Since 2014, the Summer Games challenge engaged university students from across the country to respond to major world problems through collaboration and elaboration. This year, Booz Allen chose 400 interns from 7,000 applicants. The 10 teams who made the final cut presented to senior leadership at the firm's McLean, Virginia headquarters in August 2018.

“This has really given me a sense of what it’s like to be on a team and make things that help people in a real way,” said Catherine Henderson from the Huntsville team.

But the students aren’t the only ones who benefit. “We’re able to take some of the solutions back to our clients,” said Aimee. “We’ve really seen a tremendous value to the program.”

To learn more about other key innovations from Booz Allen’s 2018 Summer Games interns, read more, here.