CENTER VALLEY, Pa. — Krushil Amrutiya is a firm believer in asking for opportunities rather than waiting for them. This approach to life has served him well — the second-year computer science major will complete his second internship this summer for top online sports company Fanatics. He secured both internships simply by asking the right people the right questions.

Last summer, Amrutiya, of Allentown, interned for social media influencer and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk.

“We became friends over X [formerly Twitter]. I met him at an event, and I asked him about doing an internship. I worked for VeeFriends, one of his web startups,” Amrutiya said. When he met with Vaynerchuk for an exit interview at the end of his internship, Vaynerchuk asked if there was anything else he could do to help him.

There was. Amrutiya didn’t hesitate to ask about getting connected to Michael Rubin, head of Fanatics. Thanks to old-fashioned networking, Amrutiya will be spending the summer in Los Angeles, working at Fanatics Live, a subsidiary of Fanatics, under company CEO Nick Bell. A large part of his internship will include coding and working on the site’s many live streams. His long-term goal is to launch his own computer software company.

“Just ask” is an approach to life Amrutiya has developed in his time at PSU-LV. “I just ask directly. The worst someone can say is ‘no’,” he said. When he first met Vaynerchuk at an in-store event, Amrutiya had a trading card he knew Vaynerchuk would find valuable. “I was going to ask him if I could trade it for an NFT [non-fungible token, a piece of digital assets stored on the blockchain such as artwork, music, or in-game items],” he said. “Instead, I asked if I could trade it for an internship with his company.”

The confidence and skills he’s honed at PSU-LV prepared him for his internships. He’s gotten more comfortable with the “just ask” approach. “When I first came to PSU-LV, I was still in that high school phase and shy about speaking up,” he said. Speaking with a professor about negotiating a grade helped him build confidence in using his voice. “That little ‘ask’ helped me get a better grade in the class,” he said.

He's looking forward to spending the summer in Los Angeles and building both his professional skills and network. His next professional opportunity is on his mind, as well. “There’s a slight chance I’ll be at Uber,” he said. This opportunity came about during his summer working for Vaynerchuk in New York City. “I was at a Starbucks getting coffee, and there was a man ahead of me. His Apple Pay didn’t work, so I offered to buy his coffee. It turned out he worked at Uber,” he said.

Amrutiya encourages other students to “flex your ‘ask’ muscle. Just do it. You have nothing to lose, and the worst someone can say is ‘no’. You have to be willing to ask for things.”