On his first day as an ADT intern, Dominic Dupuy stood in front of the mirror, adjusting his shirt “like 30 times” before heading into the welcome event. Minutes later, a conversation with another intern, who happened to attend the same high school, made him feel right at home.
“I felt such a sense of community in that moment of like, OK, I'm not alone. There are a lot of people just like me here,” said Dupuy, who is working for the summer on ADT’s Hardware Test Engineering team before returning to Florida Atlantic University for his senior year.
That feeling of connection is something ADT is working to strengthen even more with our new peer mentorship program. It pairs current interns with former interns who are now full-time ADT employees. Peer mentors help guide the interns through their 10-week experience, offering advice, answering questions, and sharing lessons learned from their own journeys.
Along the way, interns take part in hands-on learning opportunities, connect with leaders across the business, and complete a capstone project in which they make recommendations to company leaders on a real business challenge.
Guidance from those who've been there
For Nikolas Zimmerman, Preethi Vennapusa and Shivam Tiwari, the ADT internship program is personal.
All three have built careers at ADT after completing internships, and now help guide the next generation. Zimmerman progressed from IT Finance intern to senior financial analyst. Vennapusa went from being a Data Engineering intern to a full-time member of ADT's Data Engineering team. Tiwari followed a similar path, converting from an AI and Machine Learning Engineering intern to a full-time engineer.
All three also serve as peer mentors, sharing the knowledge and support that helped them grow with current interns.
For Vennapusa, the value of peer mentorship starts with relatability. Having moved from India to the U.S. in 2023 to earn her master's degree at Florida Atlantic University, she knows how helpful it can be to learn from someone who recently navigated the same transition into the workplace.
“Having direct access to someone who's already been through the internship gives you a clearer picture of what to expect,” Vennapusa said. “Since we're in a similar age group and recently went through the same experience, it feels more like a friendly conversation. It’s a different kind of comfort.”
The program also helps interns navigate some of its biggest milestones, Zimmerman said. Whether breaking down the capstone projects into manageable steps, reviewing presentations or sharing advice on becoming a full-time employee, Zimmerman says he focuses on providing interns with practical guidance they can put into action.
“If someone helps you break it down into smaller goals, you're more prepared, more confident and able to get more out of the experience,” he said. “It makes the whole internship easier to navigate.”
Tiwari says that guidance helps build confidence. Through regular check-ins and conversations, he focuses on creating a space where interns feel comfortable asking questions, sharing ideas, and seeking advice.
“If I can tell an intern, ‘This is how I did it, and this is what you can expect,’ that gives them confidence. Sometimes you worry about things that don't matter as much. What matters are your ideas and what you're able to explain,” he said.
Building confidence through connections
The added support is already making an impact on the current intern cohort.
For Gabriella Randazzo, an Events team intern pursuing her master's degree in hospitality and event management at Florida International University, having access to former interns helped remove some of the guesswork from the experience. Used to the structure of classroom assignments, Randazzo initially found the open-ended nature of the work intimidating.
“My mentor walked me through how she had done her capstone project and what it was like presenting the project to the audience,” Randazzo said. “It was helpful having access to someone who recently went through the same experience.”
Beyond project guidance, Randazzo said the mentorship has helped her expand her network and build connections across the company.
“The best advice I think I've gotten so far is to talk to everyone, say hi to everyone, pull people for coffee chats and branch out to different departments as well,” she said. “The more you know about the different departments, the more you'll know for yourself.”
From technical skills to business impact
For Dupuy, an electronic engineering major and six-year Air Force veteran, the impact of peer mentorship went beyond navigating projects and presentations. It helped him see his work through a different lens.
He said that one of the biggest lessons he has learned from his mentor was learning to think beyond the technical side of a project and understand how engineering decisions affect customers and the business.
“I didn't necessarily realize how important that was because I'm so in my own world of just building stuff,” Dupuy said. “Understanding how a business works helps me figure out what type of work and products I need to help create.”
That lesson reinforced what attracted him to ADT in the first place.
“My dream has always been to be an engineer who helps people,” he said. “Working for a company with the goal of helping save lives makes it feel like what I’m doing matters.”