Sophie Divino, Luke Farlie, Kayla Pineda
Each summer, McIntire students put their business acumen to the test in the real world—tackling internships that sharpen their skills and expand their perspectives on what various careers can look like. This year, three students turned their classroom learning and networking know-how into exciting opportunities across industries and experiences.
For Sophie Divino (McIntire ’26), that meant landing a competitive role at multinational investment bank and financial services firm UBS in New York, where the Colts Neck, NJ, native combined persistence, networking, and a little industry insight from her father, who works in the industry, to break into global finance. Ft. Lauderdale, FL, product Luke Farlie (McIntire ’26) found the perfect intersection of his passions for entertainment and finance at Universal Studios Hollywood, where he learned about the business side of theme parks in Los Angeles. And for Kayla Pineda (McIntire ’26), from California’s Bay Area, the summer meant experiencing New York for the first time while interning at Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, where she applied her interest in emerging markets in a project finance role on the Latin America team.
Their internships highlight more than just hard work and determination; they also showcase how McIntire prepares students to succeed. With a rigorous foundation in business fundamentals, access to global opportunities, and personalized Student Success resources that connect them to employers and mentors, the Commerce School ensures students are ready to transform their ambitions into rewarding and impactful careers.
We spoke with Divino, Farlie, and Pineda about how they spent their summer internships, what they enjoyed, what challenges they overcame, and what they learned.
Q: How did you spend most of your time during your internship?
Sophie Divino: My position was called GTP (Graduate Talent Program) Summer Analyst. I was in the Chief Investment Office within Global Wealth Management; it is the business area that researches investments in the macro environment and relies this information to the financial advisers to use for their clients. My team itself was content distribution, and my daily tasks were looking at and tracking all of the content published by CIO. Some of the fun stuff I got to do was publish an article on the UBS site about budgeting from the perspective of Gen Z. I had a feedback meeting with the financial advisers biweekly, and made a resulting presentation that contained solutions to address their concerns. I also worked on a project involving data analytics, looking at the performance metrics of the CIO content on a huge Excel spreadsheet and extracting patterns.
I actually used a lot of what McIntire taught me in my IT classes: taking the data, cleaning it up, and then making it into something useful like digestible graphs and a PowerPoint based off that. McIntire helped me so much this summer.
Luke Farlie interned with the Entertainment Finance team at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles.
Luke Farlie: I worked for the Entertainment Finance team. I got super lucky. It was the perfect mix. My team was responsible for daytime operations and marquee events like Halloween Horror Nights and Fan Fest Nights. They work on the budget management side, and so my whole summer project was redesigning their daily labor tracker for all positions for different teams: a costumes team, a team for the characters on the streets, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter team, and then they have their live show WaterWorld. My job was to take the daily labor tracker that they had, which only showed at like a granular week level, and I built it to be a full-year model. They could see trends and make quicker analysis on how their budget is performing versus what they forecasted at the beginning of the year.
Kayla Pineda: Project finance is a niche industry. Oftentimes, banks lend money to fund projects, my focus area was related to renewable energies like PV (photovoltaic solar energy) plants. I worked on annual reviews, taking a holistic approach to projects that have been fully financed, reviewing them, and revising them to be sent to our internal risk team. I had to learn a lot of new terminology, and as I got more familiarized, the team also put me on more annual reviews and substandard annual reviews (when assets are not performing as well). Because we had several active live deals, I was able to support the structuring of applications and assist analysts and associate’s in researching offtakers—entities that play a critical role in securing long-term revenue contracts for projects, but do not themselves provide financial guarantees. Our focus was on evaluating their creditworthiness and contract terms to help ensure bankability and mitigate revenue risk.
What did you find most challenging in the summer role?
Sophie Divino: They had me study for the SIE, a preliminary certification in securities industry essentials; I have to have that certification completed before I would start a full-time role there. They urged us to study while we were at the internship, and I’m happy they made us do that, because even though it was hard to juggle with work sometimes, we were getting paid to study, and I passed it.
Luke Farlie: What was most challenging was the Excel work, for sure. I had some basic skills at the beginning of the summer. I grew and can do much more in Excel now, but going into it, it was a huge learning phase. Because my analyst was a great mentor, he was able to teach me a bunch of things, and I learned a lot in those 10 weeks.
Kayla Pineda: Honestly, the steep learning curve was the most challenging part—especially being exposed to complex project finance concepts and the technical workings of PV plants without a prior engineering background. I wanted to be respectful of my team’s time, so I often tried to self-educate and fact-check independently, which was both rewarding and demanding. Thankfully, my team fostered a supportive environment where asking questions was encouraged.
Q: What did you enjoy most about the internship?
Sophie Divino: Everyone says the culture, and I think that’s really true. The people are great. I really connected with them. They remind me of people at UVA, where they’re so interesting and easy to get along with.
Luke Farlie: It was cool that I could actually see and interact with the teams that I was working with. I had a pretty big responsibility. It was a project implemented across all of Universal Studios Hollywood. I met a bunch of management people and got a really good sense of how to communicate with leaders. I also really loved that, as a huge fan of Halloween Horror Nights, I got a behind-the-scenes tour of all their mazes during the day and to hear about the business side behind it with my team from the event’s lead contractor.
Kayla Pineda: As a Salvadoran, I love being able to speak Spanish on my team and value the collaboration aspects. But honestly, what I loved the most was the impact I was making because the projects I worked on were renewable. My deals were based in Chile, and knowing they’re producing clean energy to make the world a better place—that stayed with me.
Q: What surprised you most about the experience?
Sophie Divino: The vast amount of positions available within wealth management. Before the internship, I assumed I was going to be a financial adviser. But I didn’t realize how many different groups there are: a markets, banking, research, and then financial advising group—all within wealth management. I’m still deciding what I want to do, and the rotational program will help me with that. I didn’t know how much mobility there was, and I don’t think I’ll get tired of the industry.
Luke Farlie: The first thing I learned about the company is how friendly the culture was—everyone on the finance team and outside of it, too, because I was in an internship cohort with people from marketing and retail. Everyone was incredibly friendly, and they loved working at Universal. My analysis manager has been at the company for 25 years. It’s easy to share your opinion there, meet whoever you want to meet, and work your way up the ladder. The biggest surprise for me was how expensive a theme park is to operate and how much money actually goes into the daily operations of a theme park.
Kayla Pineda: It surprised me how much I enjoyed it. I came in thinking project finance might lean heavily into engineering, especially since a lot of my co-workers had civil engineering backgrounds and had pivoted into finance. But I found myself really engaged with the work, even without a technical background.
The other surprise was the company culture. I’ve been to networking events at other firms, but this one was different—maybe because it’s a French company. Our events had wine and cheese, and everyone was incredibly kind and welcoming. I told my friends about it and they couldn’t believe it—it felt so different from the usual corporate vibe.
Kayla Pineda interned at Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank in New York.
Q: Future Plans?
Sophie Divino: I got a return offer. I’m very excited. I’ll start in a year, and then for two years, I’ll do six rotations in Global Wealth Management in New York.
Luke Farlie: I’m still figuring it out. The good thing is that this was an amazing internship, and I loved it. Ultimately, I would love to return back into entertainment finance. But it taught me about what I want to do in the beginning stage of my career: go somewhere where I’m going to learn a lot and get exposure to a bunch of different industries. That’s where my mindset is, but I have no idea what that’s going to look like yet.
Kayla Pineda: I got a return offer, and I am so excited to start next summer! I can see myself living in New York for another year or two, and I honestly love my team. New York is such a good base because I’m going to learn so much about myself, about personal growth and career outlook.
