Fresh Perspectives: Our Latest Global Talent Initiative

This summer, Ozion welcomed two students from the United States, Ellie Johnson and Finleigh Pogson, to the team.

Training and developing our team has always mattered to us at Ozion, and that extends to people just starting out in their careers. Programs like this one also give us a chance to grow through cross-cultural exchange, bringing different backgrounds and different ways of working into the same room.

Rather than standalone intern projects, we folded Ellie and Finleigh into work already underway across the company. As William L. Neece, CEO of Ozion Americas, puts it: "We want interns to feel like members of the team from day one. That means giving them meaningful work, supporting them as they learn, and trusting them with real responsibility. Ellie and Finleigh quickly became part of the team, and the perspectives they brought made a positive contribution to our work."

Finleigh worked with Kevin Knight, Senior Solutions Architect, on one of Ozion's largest outreach initiatives, reaching out directly to airport, airline, and service provider professionals across the aviation industry. Cold outreach can be intimidating even for people who've been in the industry for years, and Kevin says that's part of what made Finleigh's results stand out. "Outreach was something I had never really done before," she says. "At the beginning I wasn't very comfortable with it, but the more conversations I had, the more natural it became. It showed me that I can adapt to new situations more easily than I thought." Kevin saw the real achievement as something bigger than the research itself: "One of the things that impressed me most was Finleigh's ability to connect with people. She was reaching out to professionals with years, and sometimes decades, of experience in aviation and earning enough trust that they were willing to take time out of their busy days to share their knowledge. That doesn't happen because you follow a script. It comes from genuine curiosity, professionalism, and the ability to build real human connections."

Ellie's internship, still ongoing, is taking a different shape. She's working with Alicia Byrne, Communications Officer, on strategic market research, competitive analysis, and communications projects around the aviation ecosystem and the future of passenger accessibility technology. "Coming into the internship, I felt like I had a lot to learn," she says. "Market research, the software companies use, and how everything fits together were all new to me." Alicia has noticed the impact already: "Ellie's interests in cybersecurity and legal topics meant she naturally looked at the market from a different angle. She asked questions and drew conclusions about the wider ecosystem that encouraged us to step back and challenge some of our own assumptions. That's one of the reasons diverse academic backgrounds are so valuable in research."

Ellie and Finleigh have also dived into life at Ozion, from lunches and football to basketball to company events and everyday office conversation, picking up new vocabulary, a feel for French workplace culture, and friendships that reach beyond their own teams.

This summer internship collaboration has been a rewarding one for the entire team. Finleigh left with real experience in a new industry and a new country, and Ellie is still building on that as her internship continues. We're grateful to Finleigh and Ellie for everything they've brought to the team, and to everyone at Ozion who has helped make this partnership such a success so far. We look forward to welcoming many more students.