WireGuide | Issue 4 | 2022

The WireGuide is a digital newsletter that was created in 2017 by a group of marketing interns. With intentions of connecting interns throughout Cook with each other, they created content surrounding the other interns’ lives. The WireGuide stopped in the summer of 2020, as there wasn’t an intern program due to the pandemic. Two years later, we are relaunching it on a new platform. Now featured on the Life@Cook blog, the WireGuide and its stories are available to an even bigger audience. With that being said, welcome to the WireGuide!

From a young age, we are taught how to hold our breath under water. Plug your nose. Don’t inhale. Come up for air. Never, ever breathe it in. We always imagine what it would be like to breathe under water. For Ihsan Zulkifly, it was a reality.

A nomadic journey

Ihsan described his life story as nomadic, and I couldn’t agree more. His story started in Malaysia, where he was born. At the age of three, his family moved to the United Kingdom (UK), where his mother completed her degree and his father worked. Within the UK, they moved to a handful of cities; Manchester was ultimately his favorite.

“My family could never pick a place to stay and live there. We always had to be on the move,” he said.

Living in the UK granted Ihsan independence. His journey to school consisted of taking two buses and a tram, or trolley, which was a very common mode of transportation among students. His daily trip to school would often take up to 45 minutes. After nearly 10 years of living in the UK, his family was on the move again. In 2012, they moved to the United States after his father’s job at Cummins moved them to the company’s headquarters in Columbus, Indiana.

When it was time to choose a college, Ihsan made one of the shorter moves in his lifetime—just 50 minutes east to Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington. At IU, Ihsan is earning an undergraduate degree in healthcare administration and a minor in human resource management. He chose Cook for an internship because it provides him experience in both.

At Cook, he is a Human Resources intern. This summer, he was responsible for developing a dynamic calendar tool that categorizes and automatically updates the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) events across the globe for Cook employees.

Ihsan will be attending The Ohio State University in the fall to pursue his master’s degree in healthcare administration.

All things water

When you ask an Indiana resident what hobbies they have, you wouldn’t expect them to say scuba diving. At least, I know I didn’t. Whether it be scuba diving or fish keeping, Ihsan has some unique hobbies.

Ihsan initially became interested in scuba diving when he studied abroad in South Africa. He joined some of his trip-mates in snorkeling while the others went scuba diving. The scuba divers excitedly described the marine animals they saw, and Ihsan was hooked. After a year of saying he was going to do it, he got scuba certified from a class he took at IU. In this semester-long course, the students met twice a week at the pool in the fieldhouse where they would learn the necessary scuba diving skills needed to make the dive in fresh or salt water.

“Before my scuba diving class, I wasn’t really a strong swimmer. They teach you to become a strong swimmer. I actually failed the swim test like twice during the class,” he said, “The coolest thing ever was definitely taking my first breath underwater and then when you look up and see the water line and it’s moving, it feels like you’re on a whole different planet. I’ll never forget it. The feeling of breathing under water for the first time is really cool.”

Throughout the semester, they took trips to the local abandoned quarries that are now used for scuba diving. Other than fish, the scuba divers are greeted with sunken boats and statues, which makes the experience even more exciting. When he can’t scuba dive, Ihsan still gets to enjoy a part of it at home as a fish keeper.

When I asked Nikhil Varanasi to tell me about himself, he told me about three interests that describe him almost entirely—biomedical engineering, cooking, and sports. When he isn’t interning, he is either cooking (usually pasta) or indulging in something sports related.

Nikhil knew that he wanted to find a career that involved medical devices ever since he was a child. When he was younger, he suffered from health complications that required many checkups at the hospital. He was particularly intrigued by the machines used to take scans of the brain. Years later, when it was time for him to choose a major in college, he chose biomedical engineering at Purdue University, so he could make devices similar to the ones that helped him. Now, he is doing just that during his internship as a manufacturing engineering intern at Cook in the Test Method Validation department.

Like mom used to make

Something that can make a house feel like a home is home-cooked meals. Luckily, for Nikhil, his mom was amazing at cooking. She specialized in making Indian food, a constant in their meal rotation. He knew his mom was a talented chef, but he didn’t know that her cooking would be inspirational. He didn’t realize the hard work and dedication that she put in until he was living on his own and working every day too.

“It’s pretty inspirational,” he said, “My mom would come home from work around 5 or 6 every day and she would still whip up a meal.”

In addition to being a good cook, she was also a great teacher. Because of his mom, Nikhil learned how to cook many dishes, and is even known among his friends for his pasta. He eats nearly two boxes of pasta per week. His favorite pasta dish to make was inspired by Olive Garden. Eggplant Parmigiana was his go-to order when dining at the Italian American cuisine chain restaurant. Like many other people who come across a dish they enjoy at a restaurant, he learned how to make it at home.

Sports fanatic

Growing up, parents tend to register their children for a variety of extracurriculars, hoping that one might stick. For Nikhil, sports did. Whether he is coaching a basketball team, watching a game on TV, playing a pick-up game with friends, or writing about the Chicago Bulls, it’s clear that sports are an important part of Nikhil’s life.

Nikhil describes himself as a sports fanatic and immerses himself in them in every way possible. He started his first sport, soccer, in kindergarten, and he played until third grade. During that time, he also discovered karate, which he stuck with for 13 years. He even earned a third-degree black belt. In middle school, he added basketball to the list of sports he could play. Once he got to high school, he made the transition from player to coach when he began coaching a district basketball team.

Nikhil comes to Cook from the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois, which means he is right around the corner from the United Center, where the Chicago Bulls basketball team plays. He remembers going to the Bulls’ basketball games with his dad as one of the best experiences of his life.

Although he only plays sports recreationally since going to college, Nikhil found other ways to exercise his passion. In the summer of 2020, he began writing for On Tap Sports Net. On Tap Sports Net is an online platform that uses articles, podcasts, and videos to provide its audience with updates on Chicago sports news. Nikhil’s niche was writing articles about the Chicago Bulls. He enjoyed writing for On Tap Sports Net because they allowed him the freedom to express his own ideas. Because of this, he has articles that range from specific players and their season performance to off-season discussions about how the team could improve through trades or free agency.

In the future, Nikhil hopes to bring his love of sports into his career. Because of his experience at Cook, he learned about devices in the healthcare industry, which is knowledge that can help him in any biomedical engineering field.

“I would love to find a company that works with athletic programs or teams and supplies medical products or performance products that help athletes. I think that would be something like interesting to go into,” he said.

Caitlin Davis started her Cook story in the same place we did—as an intern. So, I figured it was only appropriate to end this summer’s newsletter series with a bit of inspiration. Get to know Caitlin in the Q&A below!

Where are you from?
Bexley, Ohio (just outside of Columbus—go Buckeyes!)

What university did you attend?
Undergraduate at Indiana University, Master’s at Northeastern University

What was your major?
Undergraduate in journalism, and a master’s degree in corporate and organizational communication, specializing in leadership communication

When did you intern at Cook?
2010

What department were you in? What was your position?
I was the Public Relations department’s intern

What responsibilities did you have as an intern?
Whatever I could do to be helpful! It varied quite a bit. Archiving news clippings that we physically cut out of the newspaper at that time, drafting press releases and media kits, doing interviews with employees and writing pieces for the internal newsletters, etc.

What department are you in now? What is your position now?
Director, Global Communications for Cook Medical in the Marketing & Communications function under Christa Curtis. I lead a global team of about 25 AWESOME communications professionals who handle our internal and executive communication, public relations and social media, and customer communication.

What different positions and/or titles have you had throughout your Cook experience?
After my internship I was hired full-time as a public relations coordinator. Over the next four, years I became a PR specialist and then manager as my role increased in responsibility and I worked more autonomously. In 2014, my husband and I moved to California because he was stationed at Camp Pendleton while on active duty with the Marine Corps. Because Cook didn’t have full-time remote employees at that time, I became a contract employee and focused on content creation for the Endoscopy, Urology, and HBS (now BCI) teams. Then I got pulled into more corporate communications and helped develop the general session content for the 2015 Sales Meeting in Singapore. In early 2016, we moved back to Bloomington, and I joined Cook as a “real” employee again as manager, Corporate Communications. In 2017 I became manager, executive & functional communications. In 2020, I took my current role (right before having my daughter—that was a lot of life change at once!).

If you could go back in time and give your intern self advice, what would it be?
This is an interesting question. I wouldn’t necessarily give myself any advice because then that would probably have changed my journey in some way, and I have learned so much every step of the way. I think whenever you start something new it’s important to go in with curiosity and an attitude of service. Asking questions and being willing to help is how I’ve always approached my work, and still is!