Meet our Summer 2023 Interns

Earlier this month we officially wrapped up our 2023 Summer internship. This year was a very special year for Nextdoor as we hosted 20 interns across software engineering, machine learning and social impact!

Nextdoor’s collaborative community offers an extensive array of opportunities for immersion during the summer. Our goal is to ensure interns are provided with a holistic experience aimed at nurturing long-lasting relationships, as well as professional and personal growth. Throughout their 12 weeks, interns worked on impactful projects, attended workshops with our Learning and Development team and our employee resource group supporting mental health, participated in a company-wide hack-a-thon, hosted coffee chats with our Leadership team, and presented their learnings during our Intern Showcases.

Summer 2023 Interns at our San Francisco HQ.

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Let’s meet our Summer 2023 interns:

Why did you choose Nextdoor’s internship program?

“I had the opportunity to hear one of the co-founders, Prakash, speak about Nextdoor at a career panel and the purpose of the company of cultivating a kinder community really resonated with me. The interview process was really smooth, as my interviewers were willing to help when I needed it and seemed really enthusiastic about working at Nextdoor. Having previously interned at a larger company, I also wanted to try something new and work on a public facing app, and I had heard great things about the mentorship program here!” – Sydnee Tan, SWE Intern, UC Irvine 

“I really wanted to work for a company that had social impact using technology and Nextdoor was the obvious choice from the get go. I also wanted to have the experience of working at a mid sized tech company that could afford nurtured growth, and mentorship for interns.” – Dalitso Banda, SWE Intern, City College of New York 

“When thinking about where I wanted to intern this summer, I knew I wanted to work at a company that was mission-driven and whose product reflected that mission. I also wanted to experience a mid-sized company, since I had only interned at startup-sized companies before and wanted to experience the benefits of a larger company. Nextdoor fit both of these requirements — the work I would be doing as an intern furthered the company’s goal of building community, and interning at a midsize company gave me more insight into how a company of that structure and size operates.” Genna Gams, SWE Intern, UC Berkeley

“I’ve always been drawn to companies that have a meaningful impact on communities, and Nextdoor’s mission to cultivate a kinder world where neighbors can connect and help each other resonates well with me. I was impressed by Nextdoor’s commitment to making neighborhoods stronger and safer. I’m also passionate about pursuing a career as a Machine Learning Engineer, and this internship was an incredible opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a real-world setting working for a social media tech company and learning from some of the smartest engineers in the US.” Chuks Okoli, ML Intern, Georgia Institute of Technology

In a few sentences, describe the main project you worked on.

“I Introduced a revolutionary new way to pace ads based on traffic data, making advertising on Nextdoor a much higher return on investment for advertisers than before.” Kunal Bhandarkar, SWE Intern, UC San Diego

“I worked on a project to automatically determine whether someone is attempting to create an event or a listing, suggest them to use an appropriate post composer form to do so, and pre-fill the fields of the post composer.” Anika Kathuria, SWE Intern, Columbia University 

“I revamped the Help Map, which is one of Discover’s maps. It was created during the pandemic and had a lot of outdated features (e.g. you could only post once, the post was contained to the map and didn’t show up in the feed, people couldn’t react or comment on your post, you couldn’t add attachments to your post, etc.). I refreshed the experience by creating a new Help Map post composer that allows you to add attachments and prefills with the hashtag #OfferHelp, sending Help Map posts to show up in both the feed and the map, and creating new pins and post cards for the map.” Emily Park, SWE Intern, Stanford University

How do you feel you’ve made an impact at Nextdoor? 

“As an intern, I set a goal of meeting as many people at the company as I could, both on my team and outside of it. Through one-on-ones, ask-me-anything sessions, VTO day, and more, I managed to talk with neighbors working on the finance, public policy, data science, legal, and various engineering teams! It gave me a better understanding of how the work I was doing on Ads could best serve the company’s goals, and I got to act as a liaison between the intern group and other teams in the company that didn’t have their own interns.”  Genna Gams, SWE Intern, UC Berkeley

“Trending hashtags is a very high visibility and high impact feature and I was able to put my project into production in front of real users. Knowing about what neighbors are talking about around you will lead to more conversations and more interesting ones overall and adds a crucial feature for a social media app. Overall, my impact makes the platform a more engaging product that furthers the goal of informing neighbors about what’s happening around them.” Dan Botros, SWE Intern, Cornell University

“My project was used across the ads team three weeks into my internship, which was amazing to see. It continues to be used and referenced frequently in development and testing, and I am proud to have built something so useful and impactful to our ads platform.” Cheryl Tugade, UC Berkeley

“I had a lot of ownership of my project, not only building it from scratch but I really was the DRI (directly responsible individual) for the project. I had a product manager and designer to work with for this project, and it was my responsibility to make sure to fully understand and implement features to meet user needs and bring up any concerns I had about the designs.” Sydnee Tan, SWE Intern, UC Irvine

What was your favorite Nextdoor memory?

“My biweekly 1-1 with many of the new grad engineers and playing ping-pong with fellow interns!” Kanachi Weli, SWE Intern, Northeastern University

“It would definitely be the mini golf & dinner team event we had at Spark Social in Mission Bay. We had the chance to golf, enjoy food, and make s’mores. It was nice having the time to chat with interns and the vibes were perfect.” Helen Tan, SWE Intern, University of Chicago

“Probably the intern v. intern cutie eating challenge in the New York office.”  Dan Botros, SWE Intern, Cornell University

The most popular memory among our interns was when they would stay after work for dinner on Wednesday evenings at HQ – the evening would consist of delicious meals and endless ping-pong! Check out a preview of their Around the World game below.

Interns enjoying meals at HQ.

Interns taking part in “Around the World.”