A Marshall University student will have the chance to work at and bring new ideas to Amazon at his internship at the Huntington Tri-State Service Center.

Mason Todd Blake will be a financial analyst for Amazon and will be in charge of shipping items and working on a project that will cut cost in the shipping department.

“It is an awesome opportunity,” Blake said. “It holds so much when you have Amazon on your resume.”

Blake said he hopes to one day work for Amazon full time. He currently works at the HTS Service Center, helping customers who have issues with getting packages and have talked to numerous customer service techs.

“I initially took this job hoping that it would give me an opportunity,” Blake said. 

He said his hope was fulfilled when he got this internship.

With the Amazon HTS Service Center just minutes away, Amazon Financial Controller Geff Kiser said he hopes that more Marshall students will see it as a local opportunity to seek a job.

Olen York, a professor at Marshall University, said he has high hopes for the future relationship between not only Amazon and Marshall but those two along with the community.

York talked about how people in the community think that the HTS Service Center is just a control center. However, Amazon wants the community and Marshall students to understand that is it also a place for intrapreneurship, which means the employees are not there to just help customers but also so people within the company can bring new ideas to the table.

Last fall, York’s students were a part of a test to see how they could work with Amazon. Eight students worked 12 weeks at Amazon as part of an entrepreneur class. During this class, the students worked on launching a new business unit inside Amazon. Along with that, they learned key aspects of entrepreneurship and other business attributes.

“They were able to immerse themselves in the culture at the HTS Service Center and experience what it is like to be on the ground floor at Amazon,” York said. 

As part of the process, the students went through a number of failures before being able to work out all the kinks.

“The means by which we learn the most is failure,” York said.

When the class came to an end and the students had to present their final projects to an estimated 20 amazon employees, there was nothing but high praise for the students’ work ethic and their findings, York said.

Sydney Shelton can be contacted at [email protected].