Abigail Greenleaf ’27 pursues multiple interests at Denison with the goal of discovering which ones might lead to a fulfilling career. Her learning doesn’t stop once summer starts.
A fan of romance novels, Greenleaf wrote a modern love story as part of the Summer Scholars Research Program in 2024. The economics major spent her second summer as an asset management intern for a real estate development company.
Greenleaf has made the most of her experiences to find out what she enjoys and — just as important — what’s not appealing before joining the workforce.
Abbie Greenleaf ’27 (right) was one of 33 interns at Bath & Body Works.
“I know a lot of Denison students do consulting or investment banking or finance, and so I wanted to pick one of those and see how I liked it,” Greenleaf says. “Kind of try it out for the summer.”
In 2026, she landed a prime internship with Bath & Body Works, the largest bath shop chain in the United States, headquartered in New Albany, Ohio.
Greenleaf excelled in her role and spent the summer living in Columbus, while often being reminded of the value of her Denison education.
“I’m the only non-finance major of the five finance interns,” Greenleaf says. “I definitely had a bit of imposter syndrome at first because I was worried that everybody else would know so much more than me. That’s definitely not been the case because we’re all learning the same ideas in school. And for me, a liberal arts education really teaches you how to learn on the spot and how to pull together many different disciplines into one.”
Greenleaf learned of the 10-week internship while attending the Big Red Career Expo in the fall of 2025. She met with Tom Sowd, associate vice president of logistics and finance at Bath & Body Works.
Within days of the meeting, Greenleaf was contacted by a recruiter and, after going through the interview process, was awarded one of the company’s 33 summer internships.
Abbie Greenleaf ’27 enjoyed exploring Columbus and its surrounding area.
Bath and Body Works has sent representatives to Denison career expos in 2024 and 2025, and to various other campus activities. The company also hosted one of Denison’s Career Treks, in which students participate in off-campus immersive experiences.
For her internship, Greenleaf focused on expanding distribution through e-commerce, helping the company’s footprint extend beyond its 2,500 stores worldwide. She also filed Monday morning reports that provided updates on inventory and sales in the previous week.
“A big reason I liked this internship is they gave you genuine assignments that are important to the company,” she says. “It was not just performing random side work.”
Greenleaf also worked on a finance-specific summer project, attended intra-departmental meetings, listened to executives from different branches of the company speak, and went to workshops aimed at improving her presentation skills, growth mindset, and resume building.
“I was originally a creative writing minor,” says Greenleaf, now a Spanish minor. “One of the things I really enjoyed was that there was space to tell stories about the work we were doing. It’s not all numbers or analytics.”
Select interns are offered a two-year post-graduate stint with Bath & Body Works in which they rotate through different parts of the company, giving them broad-based exposure to the many job opportunities.
Denison Associate Professor of Economics and Finance Luis Villanueva is not surprised Greenleaf thrived in her role. He praises her intellectual curiosity, ability to apply theoretical models to real-world events, and aptitude for abstract reasoning.
Villanueva knows Greenleaf as both a student and a teaching assistant in his Econ-101 class.
“Abbie was dependable, proactive, and deeply committed to supporting her peers,” Villanueva says. “She worked tirelessly to help ECON-101 students work through challenging problem sets and prepare for exams. What impressed me most was her commitment to her own growth; whenever complex questions arose from student sessions, she took them as opportunities to deepen her own understanding.”
Abbie Greenleaf ’27 and her fellow Bath & Body Works interns at the Columbus Crew game.
Beyond working for a globally recognized brand, Greenleaf spent the summer exploring Columbus, the nation’s 15th-largest city.
She and a Denison classmate rented off-campus housing near Ohio State University and hung out with fellow Denisonians who were either working or interning in the state capital. There were dinners, nights out, and a chance to attend a Columbus Crew soccer game.
“I didn’t want my life to be just waking up, going to work, coming home, and going to bed,” says Greenleaf, an Erie, Pennsylvania, native. “I’ve definitely gotten to see a lot of Columbus.”
