Who did you meet with today?
On July 18th, my fellow interns and I met with a variety of different people, each with different roles and careers within Commercial Bank of California. We gained insightful economic and financial knowledge from: Kevin Gonzalez, Tammy Jung, Thomas E. McCullough, Christopher Colella, Richard Cheng, Annie Knyazyan, and Derek (Jongseok) Jeon. Later that day, we also met and had lunch with Greg Martin, PCSD’s insurance agent from High Ground Insurance.
Where do they work? What does the company do?
Commercial Bank of California works closely with business and real-estate. It has many departments with focuses on bank lending, generating revenue or income, maintaining the stability of the bank, and assisting projects or clients to attain their goals while also ensuring the bank economically thrives and does well.
What did you learn today? What were some highlights?
We learned that there are a lot of risks that can occur in banks that can lead to them going bankrupt if the wrong investment or loan is made. As a result, there are lots of rules and regulations in place to prevent that, such as having compliance officers evaluate customers to minimize any risks.
Greg Martin further added to this idea with his career in assisting companies like PCSD to get trustworthy, quality insurance for any potential problem.
Some of the highlights today were gaining new information and general life advice from the people we’ve met. For example, learning about the Community Reinvestment Act from Richard Cheng, a CRA manager at Commercial Bank of California, helped us see that banks do more than just lending or gaining profit. They help the public and meet community needs around the area through this program. It helped us learn that giving back is an important part of life and the community’s overall well-being.
What insights did you gain into the field of real estate development?
My fellow interns and I were able to see the structure of how banks work and why each person and their role is important to making a project or idea work, similarly to the development and process of creating schools. Every role in both business and real-estate development is complicated and intricate, however, the end product is always something to be proud of. We could see that it takes a lot of diligence, hard-work, and passion that’s needed in careers to create a well functioning society.
Did you become more interested in the field after today?
After today, I did become more interested in the real-estate field because it is very diverse with what you could be involved in, whether that’s financially or not. It was a great experience getting to meet with new people and understanding a bit more about what other careers are out there.
