From the Classroom to the Ocean: Jaira Zurbito on Her Digital Marketing Internship at Vertical Freediving
Some internships are a job. Others are a natural extension of who you are. For Jaira Zurbito, a student on the Master in Digital Marketing at ESEI, her internship as a Digital Marketing Specialist at Vertical Freediving in Barcelona falls firmly into the second category.
Jaira is also a freediver. So when the opportunity came to manage social media, build strategy and create content for a freediving company, it was not just a career move. It was a perfect convergence of passion and profession.
We sat down with her to find out what she has been working on, what she has learned, and what the experience of combining study with real work actually looks like from the inside.
What Does the Role Actually Involve?
Jaira’s day-to-day responsibilities at Vertical Freediving go well beyond posting content. As the company’s Digital Marketing Specialist, she manages their social media platforms, develops strategies and creates content across channels. She has also completed a full funnel social media strategy for the business and mapped out areas for future growth.
What makes the role particularly compelling is how personal the content creation process is for her. “Since I am also a freediver, I attend training under the ocean and in the pool, and diving events,” she explains. The content she creates is not produced at arm’s length. She is in it, literally, diving alongside the community whose story she is telling.
Connecting the Classroom to Real Work
Ask Jaira how her internship connects to what she is studying in the Master in Digital Marketing at ESEI and she is direct about what she has taken away. “As a digital marketer, it is not just about content and posting. Strategy and goals are the foundation.”
That shift in perspective, from thinking about marketing as content production to understanding it as a strategic discipline, is exactly what the programme is designed to produce. Jaira is living that lesson in real time.
She has also been applying specific tools and frameworks from her coursework directly to her work at Vertical Freediving. Using the SEO and SE Ranking access provided through the programme, she conducted a full audit of the company’s website. The social media marketing content from her studies went straight into practice as she built the company’s full funnel social media strategy.
“All the learnings I got from our social media marketing module, specifically doing a full funnel social media marketing approach, I applied directly,” she says.
The Skills Being Built
Beyond the technical skills, Jaira highlights two things that the internship has developed in her that coursework alone could not.
The first is confidence. Stepping into a real role, with real clients and real deadlines, builds a kind of professional self-assurance that is difficult to manufacture in a classroom setting. The second is her relationship with technology, and specifically with AI. “Do not avoid AI, but do not fully rely on it either,” she says. “Use AI to free up time for more meaningful projects.” It is a nuanced and practical perspective that reflects genuine experience working in a fast-moving industry.
Balancing Study and Work
Managing a master’s programme and a professional internship simultaneously is not easy, but Jaira has found a way to make it work that does not feel like a grind. The reason is simple: she loves what she is doing.
“Since this is a mix of passion and career, I do not see it as a hindrance while I am studying,” she says. Sometimes that means being in the office on weekends, or joining a dive. For Jaira, those are not sacrifices. They are part of what makes the experience whole.
What the Internship Has Taught Her About the Industry
Jaira is honest about how she learns best. “I am the type of learner who learns more by doing. I am more of a visual learner than a text-based one.” Having the opportunity to experiment and apply what she is learning in class to a real situation has been, in her words, a win-win.
That practical orientation is exactly what ESEI’s project-based learning model is built around. The internship is not a separate track running alongside the academic programme. It is the academic programme in action.
Looking Ahead
When it comes to how the internship is shaping her future career, Jaira talks about ownership. “This internship helps me build ownership in what I do,” she says. “It is okay if some things are challenging and confusing, but I believe that curiosity makes me more productive and experienced.”
That combination of accountability, curiosity and comfort with uncertainty is exactly what the digital marketing industry asks of the people who succeed in it. Jaira is building all three, one dive at a time.
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