Intern Reflection: Alfred Reed and Entrepreneurism

Hi, my name is Ashika Reddy Nalamalpu, and I am a part of the Empower Internship Program at the Charlotte Chess Center. On December 14th, we had an internship meeting on entrepreneurship, led by Mr. Alfred Reed. The session was really interesting and hands-on. I learned a lot about what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Alfred Reed teaches interns about Entrepreneurial Mindsets

Mr. Alfred Reed is a developmental and transformative executive and entrepreneur, with 25 years of experience in corporate business development, strategy consulting, and small business ownership. He has also coached and taught small business owners through the Center of Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED) at Rutgers University. He has led teams and taught others to use entrepreneurial skills. His experience made this session intriguing and credible.

During the lecture, we learned what entrepreneurship really means and the core qualities of an entrepreneur, such as, creativity, adaptability, leadership and risk-taking. I thought it was fascinating how these qualities are not only important in business but also in chess. Planning, analyzing, and learning from mistakes are essential in both business and chess. In chess, planning your moves, analyzing them, and learning from lost games is very important. In a business, all of these steps are the same. The most valuable part of the lecture was understanding that failure leads to success eventually.

A group of interns brainstorm how to make their marshmallow structure

After the lecture, we participated in a hands-on activity: the Marshmallow Challenge. We worked in teams to build the tallest free-standing tower using spaghetti sticks, tape and string in 18 minutes. The objective was to build the tallest tower that was able to stably sit on top of the tower. This activity illustrated everything we learned in the lecture: the importance of planning, collaborating, and adapting quickly when things didn’t go as planned. Every team had a different approach with this activity. Some teams took longer planning than other, which led to insufficient time when it came to actually building. Other teams, went in with no plan at all, and tried to change things as they went. My team spent 5 minutes planning and the rest of the time to build. Due to this, we had some time in the end to fix our errors, leading to a better result. We ended up winning the challenge as we were able to build the tallest and most stable tower. Many teams had designs that collapsed at the beginning, which taught us that failure can be used as an opportunity for innovation. The fastest team’s tower was one of the first to fall down as they didn’t take time to plan it. My team used this to our advantage and made sure we didn’t make the same errors they did. This challenge made everything we learned memorable.

I want to thank Mr. Alfred Reed for sharing his knowledge and inspiring us to think like entrepreneurs. Our next meeting will take place on February 8th, 2026, with Ms. Jenny Moates presenting on Building a Community, and I am thrilled to develop essential skills that will help me grow both personally and professionally.