Carry Your Day: Anya Kamara

Director of Development, Somerset Development

Normally, Anya's day is spent planning the revitalization of urban communities through her company's advancement and preservation of affordable housing and other properties. But recently, her focus on development has shifted closer to home — where she is currently overseeing virtual schooling for her two children and cultivating closer-than-ever family relationships, while still ensuring that her company is doing as much as possible for their tenants.

6:30 AM

I get up early so I can squeeze in a little me time and work out before my two children wake up. Usually that's 5:30, but since we're all working and schooling from home now, I am finding the small graces and really enjoying that extra hour of sleep. The first week we were all home, I thought, Oh great, I don't even have to wake up early to work out, I'll just find the time later in the day. I realized really quickly that nope, that's just not going to happen. So I still wake up before everyone, then the kids are up an hour later. I love our mornings together — it's when everybody is in the best mood. We talk about our day and take our time.

9:00 AM

Both the kids start their school days right at 9. They each have check-ins with their teachers, so that's our goal — be sitting at the table and ready to go. Our dining room is now split into two spaces — the dining zone and the work zone. The work zone can get a little chaotic!

10:30 AM

I try to spend an hour and a half sitting with my kids and helping them. I walk my son, who's seven, through his morning meetings where he gets his assignments for the day. My daughter (who is 10 going on 14) is a little more independent, but I do need to remind her periodically that she needs to be doing schoolwork and not just listening to music. I try to schedule calls for myself starting at 10:30 so I can at least give my kids that first hour and half. Once I've gotten them set up, they are both pretty self-sufficient, so while I'm on calls, they're doing schoolwork. Right now, our company's development work is on pause, and we are focusing on how best to be there for our tenants — what options we can offer them if they are unable to make rent, and how we can provide resources in smart, safe ways.

2:00 PM

We all take a break together for lunch, then we try to do some outdoor playtime in our backyard or ride our bikes. My boyfriend and I usually both have some work to finish in the afternoon, but if the kids are done with their schoolwork, we've decided on some educational videos they're allowed to watch, as opposed to the frivolous stuff (which is for weekends only!). I use the term "educational" loosely — my son, who is obsessed with animals, loves Wild Kratts on PBS, and they both just found a new show on Amazon Prime called Annedroids, about a young girl who is building her own robot.

6:00 PM

We all end the school and work day around 4:30, and then we cook together and make dinner. I've been cooking much more elaborately and going outside of my comfort zone, adding a lot more variety, since I have a bit more time. When my boyfriend moved in with us for this quarantine period, he brought along a new dinner tradition that we all love — while we eat, everyone has to say one thing they learned that day and talk about it and teach it to the rest of us.

At the end of the day I put all of my work things into my Medium Metro Tote. I can easily tuck it away, and the table instantly goes from "desk" to dining table again.