She’s a talented young designer in the Land Development department, but there’s much more to know about Alexis Carambot. A Virginia Tech engineering graduate, she is pursuing a master’s degree and has big plans for the future. She loves to travel, and she runs in half marathons while visiting national parks. Plus she’s a fun-loving, friendly person and great co-worker. Let’s learn about Alexis in her Owner Profile.
What does a typical workday at WithersRavenel look like for you?
It begins with communication with teammates and coordination, and then I do design work. I work on the Chatham Park team, so I’m doing a lot of layouts, lot gradings, stormwater management, erosion control and things like that.
What is your favorite project that you’ve worked on at WithersRavenel?
Chatham Park 5.1 East. This is going to be my baby. A lot of the other projects since I’ve been working here were already started and I’ve jumped in and worked on them, but now I’m getting my own project. It’s going to be a 56-lot single-family subdivision on 30 acres. It’s just getting going and I’m excited about it.
Where do you see yourself professionally 5 to 10 years from now?
Definitely being a project manager or client coordinator, something along those lines where I’m working more face-to-face with the client and a little more hands off the design work.
Bonus questions
Tell us about your work pursuing an MBA.
I got hit by a meteor one day while outside on the sidewalk and decided to go back to school. (Laughs.) It wasn’t too big because I didn’t go back for engineering, but it was big enough to make me go back and pursue another degree. I want to be able to organize and oversee bigger projects. With this and Six Sigma and a lot of other organizational tools that I’ve already used, they are so mind-opening and will really help now and in the future. My MBA courses are all online, so even when the pandemic hit, it wasn’t a problem for me.
You’re a big traveler; tell us about a favorite or interesting trip you’ve taken and somewhere you would like to go.
My favorite place was Lombok (Indonesia); it was the most beautiful island. You live like a queen or a king. Getting there, it is like a 26-hour flight – that sucked. My feet were like an elephant’s, they were that swollen because I sat for 26 hours straight, it was crazy. And when I went, a nearby volcano had erupted as I was flying to go there, so we stopped in Qatar and I had a 36-hour layover because they weren’t sure if we could get to the island. I was going to have to take a jumper plane from Bali to Lombok, and even the Bali airport was shut down. So I’m in Qatar, my friend that I’m meeting is in Singapore, and we’re texting each other trying to figure out what we’re going to do – if we can’t get to our vacation, where are we going to go next. We made it there – that was a crazy trip, but it was so much fun. The scuba diving was amazing, the hiking was beautiful, getting to see the rice fields and the temples was out of this world. The sky was this purple hazy shade the entire trip from the eruption.
My next trip that I really want to go to is Brazil. I’ve had my visa now for six years because I’ve been trying to go to Brazil, I want to go so badly.
What else would you like people to know about you?
I run one or two half marathons a year. My friend who I travel with, we do this thing called vacation races, where we do a half marathon at all the national parks across America and make road trips out of it. So I’ve done half marathons at Yellowstone, Glacier and Mount Rushmore; that was a really hard half marathon.
My friend and I started our workout journey together where we would do local races like triathlons an hour or two away. Then one day my friend, she was looking for our next race and came across the vacation races and she said we need to do one a year until we do all of them. So we have three down, our trip this year got canceled because of COVID.
I’ve been running now about seven years. It’s funny because when I was a kid and a teenager, you couldn’t pay me to run a foot and now I pay hundreds of dollars to run these races and get these little participation medals and I’m like, Yeah, I did it.But the medals are like super dope. They also coordinate with the national parks that if after the race you do certain hikes, they’ll send you another medal. It’s crazy – I’ve never got the second medal because I’m usually crying in a ball in the corner because my legs hurt so much, but maybe one day I’ll do it.