ABOUT SAGE CORPS
Our Mission
- To train the next generation global workforce – we help students gain the real-world experience, skills, and network they need to succeed in today’s fast-paced job market.
- To make global experience accessible and affordable to as many college students as possible, regardless of race, gender, culture, background, or identity.
WHAT DOES “SAGE CORPS” MEAN?
(and how do you pronounce it?)
We get our name from the word sage [sāj], which means “having profound wisdom”, and corps [kohr], which means “a powerful community of people unified by common beliefs, goals, or actions”. In each program, we send a corps of students to intern abroad under the mentorship of sages – alumni and business leaders who value global experience.
Founder's Story
In May 2003, I graduated from UPenn with honors and a double major. I thought employers would line up to hire me. Not quite. With zero job offers, I did what every unemployed college graduate would do:
I HOPPED ON A FLIGHT DOWN TO SOUTH AMERICA.
Just after arriving in Buenos Aires, I knew I had to stay. Resume in hand, I went door to door looking for work at every multinational company, hotel, and restaurant in the city. Three months later, I accepted an offer to work as an unpaid intern at a local newspaper. To pay the bills, I made $5/hour teaching English to corporate executives. At the time, I did not know how this experience could help me, either professionally or personally, but my gut said it would. And it did.
Later that year, I was accepted to Northwestern University School of Law. I returned to school as a fluent Spanish-speaker and went on to develop a niche litigation practice representing Latin American companies at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. My “investment” abroad paid off, to say the least.
Just after making partner at my law firm, I made a life-changing decision to leave my legal career behind. I wanted to give back and “pay it forward” by working directly with students, somehow.
Sage Corps began as an idea on a legal pad to send an army (a “corps”) of college students abroad to get impactful professional experience. We started with five students in Buenos Aires in 2013. Today, we run programming on five continents for hundreds of students. We look for top college students to intern abroad with global startups and learn from our robust network of “Sages” (career mentors and alumni). Sound exciting to you? We would love to meet you!
