POSITION DESCRIPTION

UHG R&D is looking for an intern to embed with us, learn about our research and the challenges we face as a company and as a culture, and to write science fiction stories to help us envision the future of health, healthcare, and society.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• This intern will work closely with disease management teams and learn about health conditions (e.g., diabetes) and about our R&D programs and pilots aimed at those conditions
• She or he will travel to other states with other team members and interview people enrolled in our plans and participating in our programs/pilots
• Based on this knowledge and experience, she or he will write a series of stories that imagine what the world could look like in the future, how disease-management could evolve, what we could aspire to as a company and as a society, and how things could go both right and wrong

The goal is to be faithful to the mission of fiction in general, and of speculative fiction in particular: to create a series of plausible realities, to help the reader inhabit other lives, and to help her see further and better. We'll depend on the artistic integrity and vision of this intern to help us imagine these things, but we will also serve as advisors and editors to guide the process. Consider the position as writing for a cable television series as part of a writing team, vs. the solo artist in a cabin in the woods. But note explicitly that the goal of this enterprise is not to produce rose-colored pablum where everything is fantastic and all our efforts succeed.

DESIRED ATTRIBUTES:

• Independent thinker: challenges conventional wisdom and relentlessly seeks truth
• Curious, teachable, eager to learn: has strong opinions, weakly held
• Enjoys interactive and communicative team environment
• Collaborates effectively with others across unique skillsets
• Ethical: knows and follows standards for research / practice
• Psychologically flexible and adaptive to change
• Playful, or at least willing to tolerate eccentricities

You'll be rewarded and recognized for your performance in an environment that will challenge you and give you clear direction on what it takes to succeed in your role as well as provide development for other roles you may be interested in. REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree
• Portfolio of written fiction
• Willingness to travel with others for extended periods, up to a week

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• Work experience in a collaborative creative setting
• Familiarity with the word 'pablum'
• Willingness - eagerness - to accept feedback, and to iterate based on that feedback
• Ability to sketch a story idea in fifteen minutes, draft in a couple of hours, and then refine over days to weeks, vs. plan a masterpiece for 3 months that's never realized

CAREERS AT UNITEDHEALTH GROUP. We have modest goals: Improve the lives of others. Change the landscape of health care forever. Leave the world a better place than we found it. Such aspirations tend to attract a certain type of person. Crazy talented. Compassionate. Driven. To these select few, we offer the global reach, resources and can-do culture of a Fortune 6 company. We provide an environment where you're empowered to be your best. We encourage you to take risks. And we offer a world of rewards and benefits for performance. We believe the most important is the opportunity to do YOUR LIFE'S BEST WORK.(SM) Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: UnitedHealth Group is an Equal Employment Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. UnitedHealth Group is a drug - free workplace. Candidates are required to pass a drug test before beginning employment.

• REQUISITION NUMBER 858846

A Fortune 6 company, we're focused on helping people live healthier lives while making the health system work better for everyone. Here, we seek to empower people with the information, guidance and tools to make personal health choices. We work harder and we aim higher. We expect more from ourselves and each other. And, at the end of the day, we’re doing a lot of good for more than 142 million people worldwide.