After spending the day shadowing Alex Divaris during the CBDA Internship Day with Princess Anne High School, I knew Divaris Real Estate was somewhere I wanted to be. I was impressed by the sense of community within the office, and intrigued by site plans and the future for The Town Center of Virginia Beach—my home. Nearly two months later, after nervously riding the elevator to the seventh floor for my first day (this time as an actual intern), I was more than pleased to discover that the attitude was not simply a façade—Divaris is a great place to work! As luck would have it, I couldn’t have picked a better time to be involved, with new tenant announcements at Town Center, including my favorite, Anthropologie, paving the way for future growth and keeping the office buzzing all day long.
As a marketing intern, I found myself tasked with writing press releases, an assignment less daunting than it originally appeared, updating the company blog, along with other real estate related tasks for various people in the office. Soon, I started to pick up the commercial real estate lingo, and programs like Constant Contact and Site Reports became bookmarked in my browser. While I did a lot of work on the computer, my co-workers were great about getting me out of the office, as well. In our almost weekly “field trips,” I had the opportunity to watch an auction for a foreclosed parcel of land, tour the studio at Wavy TV 10, and meet the cast of the Hampton Roads Show, some of our local celebrities.
Over the three months I’ve been at Divaris, I’ve learned a ton about marketing, managing a company’s public relations, commercial real estate and the corporate office environment in general. For instance, often times, people won’t respond to your emails or calls; however, that doesn’t mean you stop trying. Also, did you know that the Cosmopolitan lot is the best place to park at Town Center?! On a more serious note, in learning the history of the company and how it’s grown in this area, I have a better understanding of where I’m from and how Hampton Roads is developing. It has been so exciting to know I was working with the people who are influencing and molding the growth of my home town.
The real life experiences and advice I’ve learned from this opportunity will stay with me throughout my career and education. I feel there is no better way I could’ve prepared myself for college, and I am so happy to have been able to help out along the way. Now, as the summer draws to a close, it seems the very thing that drove me to pursue this internship at Divaris is making it hard to leave. The welcoming, friendly environment at One Columbus Center is one of the many reasons people come to work at Divaris, and stay for their career!
