Meet Ribbon’s Inaugural Intern Class

Hi! We are Tyler, a Marketing Intern, and Jordy, a People and Talent Intern, from Ribbon’s inaugural intern class. We’ve spent the last seven weeks learning and working on projects in the NYC office. As we approach the end of our internship, we reflected with our intern class on our experiences this summer and want to share our journey. Whether you’re a prospective intern or experienced professional, this piece is aimed at sharing a bit about Ribbon’s culture and the successes that have come with the introduction of the intern program. 

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Ribbon’s mission is to transform the real estate transaction process and make homeownership achievable for a diverse group of home buyers and sellers across the country. In keeping with these values, it was important in our recruiting efforts that this diversity is reflected. A range of experiences in life, work and school experience were all taken into account. The end result was a 15-person intern class with a wide range of interests coming to New York from states across the US!

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How did you hear about Ribbon?  

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Angelina: I am part of a Women in CS club at Berkeley, and I met someone there that got an offer from Ribbon but had to decline it. When I talked to her about how I was trying to find an internship over the summer, she reached out to Alexa and connected us.

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Jordan: I heard about them through Ribbon’s BuiltIn profile.

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Sophie: I looked up the best fintech places to work for in NYC!

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What projects are you working on? What are you most excited about? 

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 Arya: Right now, I'm working on making a dashboard to view and adjust pricing fees by state. I think the part of my project that I'm most excited about is (fingers crossed) it will actually be used and make an impact on helping people within the company! 

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Jordan: I’ve been working on sourcing candidates for our future internship program. I have had the opportunity to sit in on phone screens, run interview debrief sessions, and pair candidates with talent partners and recruiting coordinators. I have also had the chance to get a 360 view of the full-cycle recruiting process and learn about the steps taken from applying to a job all the way through being onboarded as a new hire. 

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Tyler: Currently, I’m working on this piece (woo!) and looking for agents for a case study blog piece. Prior to this, I was working on creating Google Ads and iOS copy for our mobile app. It’s really fun to get to do both paid and organic marketing and also work on a variety of projects as the market shifts and we update our products! 

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Eshan: I'm working on a few different features. I'm most excited about enabling agents to make concurrent offers on listings. It's a huge business need, but more importantly, this feature will give first time home buyers more options to choose from.   

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Tell us about your experience working at a startup! 

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Eshan: I love it. The decentralized nature of this startup allows everyone here to move quickly, take more ownership over the work they do and suggest unique ideas. Professional development is accelerated here. 

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 Sophie: I love that Ribbon is people-driven and not profit-driven. The community here genuinely wants to support you and help you explore the things that you want to, and not the things that they want you to.

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Sophia: So much kindness, respect, and excitement from my peers. Everyone comes to work with a good attitude and we’re constantly reminded of the impact our work has on real families! Coming to work makes more sense when the impact is clear and aligns with your values.

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​What’s your favorite part about interning at Ribbon so far? 

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Arya: My favorite part about Ribbon has been the people. Everybody is so supportive and eager to help all of us interns finish this summer as better people than when we started. From the engineers who help me with technical problems, to my mentors who answer any and all of the wild questions I have, to everyone in People + TA that organized our awesome intern program, I really feel like Ribbon has welcomed us with open arms.

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Eshan: The people. Ribbon is one of the most diverse groups of people I've been around, and has fostered such an inclusive atmosphere for all. I love how genuine, mission-oriented and social impact driven the people here are. 

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Aymane: The collaboration from different teams at Ribbon is amazing; it’s my favorite part of working at Ribbon. Besides the people, the culture and attitude of everyone working towards our mission is great! Everything I do has a direct impact on our team.

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Sophie: I get to work in so many areas! I'm based on the Corporate Finance team, but I get to do a lot of projects with Capital Markets, Accounting, Valuations, and even Analytics teams. I really like coding too, so it's really nice that I can openly explore the software engineering side as well. 

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Chithra: I love how friendly, happy to answer questions and share about their roles, everyone is. I feel like I'm able to learn so much just by talking to anyone here.

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Sophia: The community. The people are incredibly kind, welcoming, and proud of one another. Ribbon is also a perfect size for abstractly understanding how all the moving parts come together and getting a more cohesive understanding of the company and people!

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 ​​Favorite thing that’s happened in the NYC office so far?  

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Jordan: I may be biased, but I love that there are always dogs in the office. Seeing a cute puppy will always brighten your day.

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Aymane: Here are just some of my favorite moments so far: Justinian (IT Team) got us a projector, doggies in the office, laughing a ton and nerding out with Albert (Analytics Team), our intern dinner, even though it was outside the office, Serge (Talent Team), Faijul, and Tyler’s swag, headshots day, playing with Play-Doh with Jordan K. and Caroline, real convos with Hannah (Talent Team), and accidentally locking myself in the side stairs.

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Chithra: Karaoke is hands down my favorite thing we've done this summer!

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Conclusion: 

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The introduction of an internship program at Ribbon has provided new challenges and successes for employees and interns. It’s been an opportunity for employees to share valuable advice, provide relevant projects and give feedback to interns very early in their careers. For interns, Ribbon has provided an environment where any question asked will be answered, and there are opportunities to contribute in a meaningful way. We have been welcomed into Ribbon with open arms and embodied the Ribbon values of learning, teaching, and growing while here. If this sounds like a place where you’d be happy to come to work, check out opportunities to join our team.

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