“Shark Tank” Internship Program Keeps Growing

From left: Zoe Hammond, Adele Papoosha, Clay Newbill, Erica Cabo Dal Molin and Arianna Laidley .

More and more University of Central Florida students are swimming with the Sharks thanks to communication alumnus Clay Newbill ’82.

The Executive Producer of ABC’s “Shark Tank” provides opportunities for his fellow Knights through an exclusive internship with the show.

Since the Clay Newbill Hollywood Internship program started in 2013, 15 interns have traveled to Hollywood, Calif. to participate.

Interns in the program travel to Los Angeles to work on the Emmy-winning TV show for five to seven months. They work in various production areas based on their interests.

The opportunity is only available to radio-television students in the Nicholson School of Communication. This year’s interns are Adele Papoosha, Arianna Laidley, Zoe Hammond and Erica Cabo Dal Molin. They feel like their hard work paid off.

“This internship is truly one of a kind,” Hammond said. “I don’t know who would be able to pass up the opportunity to work on an Emmy award-winning television show if you dream of working in the entertainment industry.”

Interns have the opportunity to work in all three sectors of the show: casting, production and post-production.

All four women also earned $12,500 scholarships, courtesy of Newbill’s program, for relocation and living expenses. This is the second year in a row that Newbill has funded four interns, an increase from only three in previous years.

Two previous interns and UCF alumnae, Kelly Nader and Kiara Harris, chose to stay in the Tank.

Nader was an intern during the summer of 2015. She accepted a job working on the show after graduation as Newbill’s personal assistant, and she was recently promoted to associate field producer. Along with her new role as an AP, she will be traveling across the nation shooting footage of contestants.

“Working as an intern was awesome, but I didn’t realize how much more I was going to learn working as Clay’s assistant,” Nader said.

2016 intern Kiara Harris stepped into her old role.

A commonality between the two graduates is the ability to adjust to their surroundings. Nader found her love of production through the internship and Harris is grateful to be in a position where she can learn and stretch her boundaries.

“I still don’t know what I want to do within reality television,” Harris said. “The truth of the industry is this, you may know what you want to do after college and then get into the industry and change your mind completely, or you may know exactly what you want and work hard until you get it. If you don’t know at first, it’s okay.”

Over a dozen interns have gotten the chance to take their first big bite out of the television industry thanks to Newbill.

Nader does not expect the number of internships or promotions to decrease for UCF students any time soon.

She said “Clay could hire anyone who has worked in the industry and already knows how things go, but he gives this incredible opportunity to UCF students.”