Build Up High School Internship Expands to Boost Diversity in Construction

Seattle, October 13, 2025

News Summary

DPR Construction’s Build Up program is growing, offering paid, eight-week internships that give high school juniors and seniors hands-on exposure to construction management, technology and business skills. Accessible to low-income and first-generation students, the program pairs interns with professionals on active job sites and trains them on industry tools like BIM 360 and Primavera. Build Up emphasizes mentorship, public speaking and career pathways, with cohorts that reflect greater gender and socioeconomic diversity than the industry norm. The program aims to prepare students for college and careers while making the construction workforce more inclusive.

Build Up internship grows pipeline for construction careers; Seattle startup raises $10M; Reign adds striker on 4.5-year deal

Three separate developments this week touch education, technology and professional sports. The largest story for workforce and community development is the expansion of the Build Up High School Internship program, run by DPR Construction. A small Seattle startup has closed a sizable seed round, and a professional soccer team has added a proven attacking player to its roster on a multi-year contract.

Build Up High School Internship program expands reach

The Build Up High School Internship program is an eight-week internship that gives high school juniors and seniors hands-on exposure to the construction industry. Since it launched in 2017, Build Up has introduced more than 160 students to construction careers. In 2025 the program welcomed 31 interns across the company.

The program is a paid internship with interns working full-time during the internship and earning competitive hourly wages. It is designed to be accessible: eligibility includes students whose family income meets HUD low-income standards and students who may be the first in their families to attend college. The program reports that seventy-five percent (75%) of Build Up interns plan to be first-generation college students, and that almost half are young women.

The internship immerses students in construction management realities, covering project planning, construction technology, and the wide variety of roles available in the construction field. Interns are exposed to every facet of the jobsite, from safety procedures to the latest construction software and technology. Named industry tools students gain experience with include BIM 360, CMIC, HammerTech, and Primavera.

Beyond technical skills, Build Up emphasizes business skills such as communication, time management, and navigating a professional environment. Each intern completes a final presentation that provides practical experience in public speaking and project management. DPR treats high-school interns with the same respect as college-aged interns, and 22% of Build Up participants return later as college interns. Several participants have joined DPR full-time after internships.

DPR’s Community Initiatives Leader is Diane Shelton, and Ashley Durbin serves as an Estimator for DPR Construction’s Pacific Northwest region and chairs the Community Initiative Committee in Seattle. Program leaders say the goal is to provide meaningful skills exposure and mentorship to students who might not otherwise consider a career in construction, helping to build a more diverse, skilled, and confident workforce that reflects the communities where DPR builds.

A local example of impact is Seattle participant Selome Muruts, who first joined Build Up as a high school intern in 2023 and later returned as a college intern, working with DPR’s Preconstruction and Virtual Design and Construction teams while pursuing a degree in civil engineering at the University of Washington.

Seattle startup raises $10 million to pursue emotionally aware AI

A four-person company named Nuance Labs recently raised $10 million in a round led by Accel, with participation from Lightspeed and South Park Commons. The company, founded earlier in 2025, is developing an AI system capable of understanding and expressing emotion in real-time across multiple modalities.

The startup is working out of Foundations, a Seattle-based startup community, and has added two employees to its original four-person team. The technical approach emphasizes modeling small slices of human behavior—such as pauses or facial micro-expressions—using auto-regressive transformers to produce emotional interpretation and authentic expression in real-time. The company favors specialized, efficient models over generalized large language models, aiming for more economical training and faster performance suitable for interactive consumer applications like AI avatars and emotion-aware video call tools.

The firm’s leadership includes Edward Zhang, co-founder and CTO, and Fangchang Ma, co-founder. Founders say they chose to stay and build in Seattle rather than relocate to the Bay Area and plan to move into a new downtown Seattle office while aiming to establish a footprint in the Bay Area as they scale.

Professional soccer club signs a 24-year-old forward to long-term deal

The professional team announced the signing of Mia Fishel on a 4.5-year contract. Fishel, a 24 years old forward who previously played for Chelsea FC and has experience with Tigres UANL, joins a roster that blends veteran players and promoted young talent. Team notes highlight depth in midfield and a strong young core including players who earned monthly league honors and goalkeeping talent considered among the top in the league.

The team returns to action at Lumen Field on Sunday, July 20 in an international friendly against Urawa, with single-match tickets available and promotional events surrounding the fixture. The club also scheduled a Pride Match on Friday, August 1 and a Queen’s Match on Monday, August 18.

Why these items matter

• Build Up High School Internship program feeds diverse talent into an industry that has historically underrepresented women and other groups.
• Nuance Labs signals investment interest in specialized AI that aims to make human-computer interaction more natural and emotionally aware.
• The long-term signing of Mia Fishel affects roster planning and competitive balance while spotlighting player movement between international clubs and domestic leagues.

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Key features at a glance

Deeper Dive: News & Info About This Topic

Additional Resources

• Daily Journal of Commerce: Build Up High School Internship (DPR)
• Wikipedia: DPR Construction
• The Seattle Times: Mayor Harrell proposes limiting a process that delays new construction
• Google Search: Mayor Harrell construction appeals process Seattle
• GeekWire: Ex-Apple PhDs raise $10M to build an AI foundation model that understands emotion (Nuance)
• Google Scholar: emotional AI multimodal emotion recognition
• The New York Times: Seattle skybridge houses ADU
• Encyclopedia Britannica: Accessory dwelling unit
• Reign FC: Reign FC continues to build young core with addition of Fishel
• Google News: Mia Fishel Reign

Author: Construction NY News

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