Mikaela Rabizadeh editor
Personalities Josh Flagg and James Harris of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles paid a visit to campus on March 6 as special guests for the Real Estate Club’s speaker series. While the two TV stars were intended to speak at an open event for students in the Salter, due to activity request conflicts, they instead joined club co-presidents seniors Jonathan Meshkani and Daniel Hanasab for an interview in the KBEV room. The Q&A session is available to view on KBEV’s YouTube channel.
Meshkani and Hanasab curated their annual speaker presentations to spark inspiration in students. Last year, they organized their first speaker event featuring residential real estate broker Ginger Glass. Before changing locations for the event, Meshkani expressed the importance of face-to-face interaction with professionals.
“Instead of reading online presentations, we get to see someone for real. They tell us about the cutthroat brokering industry selling $100 million houses,” Meshkani said. “That inspiration, getting inspired from a real-world presentation, will help kids be motivated to do their best and become the best person they can be.”
Hanasab believes that the speaker series can benefit students who are interested to any profession or field study.
“The lessons we learn in real estate are all universal ideas. Being a good communicator, being straight forward, and having strong integrity: these are all ideas that can be applied to anything that are our members want to do,” Hanasab said. “We see real estate as a subject that helps build the good character in a person.”
While the presidents initially imagined it to be a school-wide event, only 15 students, who signed up via a Google Forms link, were able to view the speaker session live due to limited space in the KBEV studio. Assistant Principal Drew Stewart wishes that the event could have been available to more students.
“I would have loved for all of the timelines to be met so that this could have been a big event in the Salter for the club and for kids to go. I know that there was at least one student, if not others, who were disappointed that they had gone into the wrong location, showed up once they realized it was in KBEV and they weren’t able to view the event. And, they were bummed they were missing it,” Stewart said. “I wish from top to bottom that we could have gotten the event the way it was originally proposed so that the most people could have enjoyed it.”
After the fact, Meshkani felt favorably about the location change. Since the club’s collaboration with KBEV establishes their interview “a permanent online resource,” he feels confident that it will be even more accessible for students.
“I really felt an energy in the KBEV 6 studio that I have never felt in past speaker series,” Meshkani said. “It was a perfect match.”