Who did you meet with today? 

Today we got to meet the amazing team that works behind Blueprint! More specifically, we got to personally talk to John Sun, the fantastic CEO of Blueprint, who took us to get boba and talked to us about the rich history of Blueprint. We also got a talk from Akil Manley, who taught us about the ins and outs of project management and how Blueprint chooses the projects they support.

Where do they work? What does the company do? 

Everyone we met today works at Blueprint, the amazing company where me and five other high school students are interning this summer. The company builds affordable charter schools in California, Washington, Texas, and Colorado; enriching the surrounding communities and furthering the development of exceptional education.

What did you learn today? What were some highlights? 

Today we learned about how Blueprint got its start and what Blueprint’s mission is. Additionally, we learned how the non-profit runs and the thought process of the CEO, John Sun, when choosing to support a project. Furthermore, when we talked to Akil Manley, the Regional Directory of the Southern California Region of Blueprint, we learned about the specific details of project management. We learned how Blueprint chooses who to work with and how they come to agreements with their partners. For example, we learned about location, zoning, affordability, laws, etc.

What insights did you gain into the field of real estate development?  

I think that I can speak for most of the interns when I say that we learned that real estate development can be really tough. There are a lot of difficult conversations that you need to have in order to be successful in the field. You also have to balance so many different variables like laws, land/environmental issues, and different push back from different communities. Furthermore, we also learned that you need to be very realistic about what you want when you want something to be developed. Unless you have unlimited resources and time, you can’t always get 100% of what you want, and it is hard trying to accept that as a client and vice versa ​Click or tap here to enter text.​

What did you find the most interesting about the field in the field after today? 

What I found most interesting about what I learned about real estate development was the fact that there are so many aspects that go into actually completing a project. I always see construction and development in my community, and it seems like everything happens so smoothly and fast but today gave me a different perspective on what goes down when developing property. For example, Akil Manley was explaining the process of due diligence, which is the process of checking every single detail around a certain property before anything is even built, which shows how tedious the work can be.

Photos: Christian Acevedo, Summer Intern 2026