From Launchpad to Seer: Meet the Interns Behind Our AI Optimization Academy

Earlier this spring, we launched our AI Optimization Academy in partnership with Launchpad, bringing three Philadelphia interns into Seer to do real GEO research and testing alongside our team

(More on the program and why we built it here.).

Now that they're settled in, we wanted to let them speak for themselves. Below are three stories from Yara Kemeh, Jamir Ong, and Bryan Gunawan in their own words.

[We will be updating every Friday with their stories, one-by-one, starting on May, 8th, so stay tuned for more!]

Meet Bryan Gunawan...

It's been over a month since I joined Seer as an intern, and a lot of words come to mind when I think about it. But one word sits above the rest: welcoming. The space, the work, the respect, the community, the way people here actually value each other, all of it has felt genuinely good.

But let me back up a little and tell you about how I got here.

I came to the United States in 2023 from Indonesia. It was not an easy decision for my family. COVID had hit hard internationally, bringing with it a wave of setbacks that reshaped a lot of lives, including ours. My mother had her reasons, and she shared at least one of them with me.

So we came.

I was 17, in a country I didn't know, with no friends, no network, and nothing familiar outside of family. Some people might feel lost in that situation and I won't pretend I didn't. But I also couldn't let go of the thing I kept seeing underneath all of it: a new start.

I should be honest that I wasn't a great student back home. I wasn't particularly driven, and I loved gaming far more than I loved being productive. School was really just something I got through rather than something I invested in, but things shifted when I arrived.

Maybe it was the distance from everything I knew or the weight of the opportunity. Whatever it was, I decided to take it seriously.

I enrolled at Horace Furness High School in South Philadelphia and graduated with straight A's. I joined clubs, took AP classes, and I even became a teaching assistant to my CS teacher. One afternoon, while I was building a new scheduling system for another CS teacher, mine pulled me aside and told me about Launchpad.

I was ecstatic.

No traditional college pathway. A direct route into tech. Real work, real learning, and an income while doing it. It sounded too good to be true, and honestly, I was fine with that. I brought everything I had into that program and committed to proving what I could do.

The experience has been transformative. I won't pretend there weren't moments of doubt, thoughts about whether a degree would eventually be required, whether any of this would be enough, but those doubts have gotten quieter.

What's gotten louder is a track record I'm genuinely proud of: four client projects completed, each with positive feedback. That might not sound like much on paper, but for someone who entered this industry with no connections, no degree, and no roadmap, it means a great deal.

And now, I'm at Seer Interactive.

I am doing research on AI behavior, validating hypotheses, working to understand what's right and what isn't, and contributing to that knowledge so others can build on it. Sixteen-year-old me in Indonesia would have never believed this was possible.

I used to think I'd end up doing something purely physical, something that required none of the curiosity or ambition I was still figuring out how to use. And yet here I am.

When most people picture a corporate workplace, they imagine grey walls, stiff formality, and a culture that tolerates you at best.

Seer is not that.

It feels more like a community than a company. It is still professional and structured, but there is a warmth here that I didn't know to look for. You feel it in conversations and in the way people show up for each other.

Before this internship, my first question about any job was about compensation and that was it. That was the whole filter.

Now, the first thing I'll ask a future employer is: What does your community look like?

That shift tells me everything about what this experience has meant.

Meet Yara Kemeh...

...and the broken PC that changed everything

When I got my first ever gaming PC, it was faulty.

It kept shutting down with no warning and I couldn't go 30 minutes without having to turn it back on. It frustrated me so much that I decided to take it apart and troubleshoot it myself.

I spent an entire day looking up YouTube videos and searching for what could possibly be wrong. I took that thing apart and put it back together three times.

Before that moment, I didn't think technology was a path for me.

Art was my passion. I went to CAPA, an art high school in Philly, but tinkering with that PC changed something.

I didn't just enjoy messing with the hardware, I loved learning about the software too. Going into the BIOS and customizing my settings made me feel so cool.

That was the moment I realized tech was for me.

Around the same time, my friend Kayla told me about a program that teaches IT and connects you with opportunities in tech. That piqued my interest. She invited me to Launchpad's pitch competition where her group presented an app idea, complete with research on a real-world problem in a community they cared about and a real solution they had built.

Launchpad hosted the competition in Seer's office space. I remember walking in and just taking it all in, the space, the energy, the people. I was there as a guest just watching from the audience, but seeing women of color like me up there presenting real-world app ideas stuck with me.

It made me want to be the one presenting next time.

I had no idea at the time that I'd end up interning in that same building.

That experience encouraged me to explore Launchpad Philly, where I could learn tech while gaining soft skills too. One of the projects I'm most proud of from that experience is Immigo: an immigration web app I helped build to give immigrants in America access to their rights, resources, and paperwork help in multiple languages.

That project is a reflection of what drives me, using technology to give back to communities I care about.

So did I switch from art to tech? The answer is I didn't.

I value my artistic and creative side just as much as I value my tech side. I've always wanted to bring creativity into every tech space I'm a part of.

My internship with CreateAccess is a perfect example of that. I've been with them for about a year now, and I get to work at the intersection of 3D creation and tech education. It's the kind of work where my art background isn't separate from my tech skills, they fuel each other. That experience showed me I never have to choose between the two.

I value combining creativity, technology, community, and experimentation, and I carry that into everything I do.

Now as a first-generation college student studying Art and Design at the Community College of Philadelphia, I'm focused on creating visually engaging, user-centered digital experiences that blend design and code.

My internship at Seer has been an incredible next step.

I've been diving into Generative Engine Optimization, building AI-driven tools, and learning from a team that's genuinely pushing things forward.

I'm expanding my knowledge and contributing to a company that shares my values, and I'm excited to keep growing from here.

Meet Jamir Ong...

Curiosity as a Career: Finding My Inner Detective in AI Research

The one genre that I can always count on to keep me engaged are mystery solving or detective-like shows.

I remember watching Dexter for the first time, and it felt like I was really getting an inside look on how detectives do their work. I’m not going to sit here making a large claim that, “I’ve finally been able to realize my life long dream of becoming a detective.” 

But I will say that I have found a place that keeps me engaged just as I am when I’m watching these shows. 

Technology has always been fascinating to me. With the desire to kick off a journey in the industry, I sat down with my high school counselor in senior year. When I mentioned that I was really interested in technology, she came back with a program that a few other students were involved in: Launchpad Philly.

Then in a coincidental turn of events, Launchpad themself held a panel at my high school's career fair where I applied for an interview.

I’ll admit that initially the curriculum was slow. I’d always find myself at the end of those sessions feeling like it wasn't enough.

Eventually Launchpad presented me with an accelerated pathway I could pursue, and so naturally I jumped at it. Through the course of my time at Launchpad I grabbed as many experiences as I could.

Workshops that no one wanted to sign up for? Another activity to add to my collection.

I had gained experience through contracts and internships.

But something was lacking.

I found myself not being very engaged with the work I was doing. In search of more, I found myself as an AI researcher at Seer Interactive. 

My career before Seer saw a lot of programming. But for all its problem-solving intensity, programming left me feeling like I wasn't truly exploring.

Now in a position that was so heavily focused on research, I learned that this kind of work was scratching that very itch.

We research AI response behavior. As with any kind of research, we've been doing a lot of analysis. We try to simulate an authentic experience of using AI tools as a consumer, then we take a moment to really understand why AI may have responded the way it did.

To name one of the things we take into account for this research are brands/products that surface across different models. I was researching different speakers to buy, and all of the models I tested came back with JBL as their top choice. 

One could come to many conclusions from this: 

• Notoriety is a big factor?

• AI models pick the safest recommendation?

• JBL has insider agents manipulating AI to favor them?

There are just so many things I could investigate. 

While I’m not stringing up red twine across a large cork board. I still have been able to feel like a little detective myself. I gather evidence, and put together case studies.

While that feeling of acting like a detective may not have been Seer’s original intention when giving me this opportunity, they still have given me that space where I can explore and prioritize curiosity.