Kea has announced the first recipient of the Winter Internship Award, a prestigious new scholarship allowing leading candidates from New Zealand's top business schools to work at multinational corporates based in the US.

Courtney Sutherland, from the University of Auckland Business School, will travel to the US in November to take up her internship at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Based in Stamford, Courtney will work on the world’s largest trading floor for the duration of her three month internship.

The award is part of the Kea Education Initiative, a series of programs aimed at increasing educational exchanges between New Zealand and the US.

Prime Minister John Key, who announced the establishment of the Kea Education Initiative at a lunch event in New York last year, met Ms. Sutherland at the University of Auckland Business School in June, and congratulated her on the award.
 
Kea will host a function in New York in November to welcome Courtney and to formally launch the Kea Education Initiative.

Kea also announced its intention to work with ANZA, a non-profit organization based in New York focused on raising money for educational purposes, to help broaden the opportunities for educational exchanges between the US and New Zealand.