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Welcoming Our 2026 Summer Interns!

Read time: ~5 minutes

5/19/2026 Author: Lyra Wrenvault

Every season at Thrive by Design has its own rhythm. This summer brings something new: not just more projects, but more minds, more hands, and more perspectives shaping the work we do. Today, we’re proud to welcome three interns whose talent, discipline, and curiosity raise the standard of our studio.

Meet our 2026 cohort that blends technical rigor, artistry, and research discipline

Genesis Familia

Genesis joins us with a storyteller’s instinct and a builder’s technical discipline — a combination you don’t often see this early in a designer’s career. Her work blends narrative clarity with rigorous documentation, and she brings a sensitivity to human experience that strengthens every conversation she’s part of. Genesis reminds us that design is not just about space, but about the people who move through it.

Kamora Johnson

Kamora brings a classical hand and an eye for proportion. Her drawings carry the discipline of traditional draftsmanship and the warmth of a human touch — the kind of work that makes you slow down and actually look. With training shaped by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art, she brings lineage, rigor, and a deep respect for the craft of building.

Mojgan Akhavani

Mojgan joins us from the research world, where she’s completing her PhD at Thomas Jefferson University. Her work bridges building science, historic preservation, and material innovation, from textiles and solar gain to the environmental performance of ancient structures across Persia and Iran. She brings scientific rigor and historic insight to every design conversation, grounding our practice in both evidence and heritage.

The Thrive Design-Build Internship is a valuable blend of construction and design.

It’s an immersion into the full arc of design‑build practice. Our interns don’t just produce drawings; they learn how those drawings become real. They gain professional development in the studio, design training through structured critique, and, uniquely, hands‑on construction experience that sharpens their judgment and deepens their understanding of the consequences of every design decision they make.

On weekends, they join our class, stepping into a lineage that stretches back through the atelier system of the École des Beaux‑Arts, where architects were shaped through mentorship, repetition, and direct engagement with craft. That tradition lives on here. Thrive by Design is part of a long‑standing architectural and builder lineage that invests in apprenticeship, in passing down knowledge through doing, and in forming designers who understand buildings from the inside out.

By joining us, our interns aren’t just learning a profession. They’re stepping into a living tradition, one that asks them to think clearly, draw honestly, build responsibly, and carry forward our craft with intention.