REGIONAL Federal Credit Union and Calumet College of Saint Joseph (CCSJ) recently came together to provide an invaluable opportunity to one CCSJ Senior who is looking to pursue a career in Banking.
Her name is Angelique Cassell, and the opportunity is REGIONAL’s first internship ever, and one that would have never happened without REGIONAL and CCSJ working as a team to make a difference in the lives of Northwest Indiana’s students.
“I don’t drive,” Cassell said about her journey to landing her internship at REGIONAL’s Hammond Branch. “So when I reached out to CCSJ about interning, they asked me where I wanted to go and the first place I told them was REGIONAL because it was so close to my house.”
While it would have been easy for CCSJ just to tell Angelique to pick another institution that was on their list of internships and move on, Angelique said she is forever grateful that they took the extra time to work with her on making the internship happen.
“The school actually reached out to REGIONAL to make it a possibility,” Cassell explained about her journey to getting the internship at REGIONAL. “They both made it happen for me, and I am so thankful. It is a blessing for me.”
And while location initially was the driving force behind Cassell’s choice of banking institutions, Angelique says every day she goes into the office it is abundantly clear she made the right choice for her career path.
“When you take an internship you are really doing it for the experience more than the pay,” said Cassell. “And I am glad I work here, because they are really giving me an opportunity to learn about every different aspect of banking.”
“They’re putting me to work here,” Cassell added, “and I like that a lot.”
But it’s not just the experience she is gaining in the work world, Cassell added, that makes working at REGIONAL an opportunity of a lifetime, it’s getting to work with a great team that treats her more like part of a family than part of the payroll.
“One thing I learned quickly here at REGIONAL is that it’s the people that make a difference,” Cassell said. “You get that respect here. You get that balance of work and family life here. And the result is that every day I am excited about coming into work and seeing my friends.”
And those friendships, Cassell said, are what she has learned business is really all about at REGIONAL: friends in the community helping each other.
“REGIONAL doesn’t have big signs up everywhere, because they don’t have to. They are already out there in the community working with them and working the people of Northwest Indiana.”
