Category: Other Successful Berklee Alumni

Michael Benson

Listen to the interview (Approx. 55 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2010 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  guitar.

 

Position:  Senior Account Manager at Pixability, a start-up which helps companies do online video marketing campaigns.  Michael works with clients to get the specifics on the ad campaigns and results they want, and helps implement it. He supervises three more junior-level account managers, and also works to think up improvements for his own company’s software/interface.

Overview:  While at Berklee, the Music Business Dept. recommended him for an internship at SonicBids, which led to other internships and a job as an account manager when he graduated.  Something over a year later, Michael was brought onto a “start-up” within SonicBids, but found that it had too little structure and he wasn’t doing well, so he started looking for a new job while continuing to work.  Michael felt that “Opportunities within music were limited for someone with my skill set.  I decided to open up my job search and see what’s out there.”  A high-volume job search for several months led to an account manager job at ContentLEAD, which specialized in search engine optimization, though Michael also worked with clients to help them design effective websites.  After a couple of years, a former-colleague who had moved to Pixability recruited Michael for an account manager position there.  Good work & company growth led to a promotion a couple of years later.

 

You can see his LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “What makes a business setting worthwhile are the people you work with, and do you have the chance to learn and grow?  I enjoy working with tech , and the process of sitting around and brainstorming and envisioning something and then bringing it to fruition.”

“My music education was a real differentiating factor in the job market.  It’s really important to  be a good listener–it helps you deal with clients.  You hear subtleties in their voice–do they have more to tell you?  Negative space plays a role in the dynamic of a conversation–Musicians understand all this.”

He has performed at a couple of friends’ weddings.  “Music is something that never leaves you no matter what you end up doing.  I play every day to my children, as well as with my family and at friends’ weddings.”

Don’t do your resume by yourself–have someone else look it over.  Also find some ones that you really like and use them as a template.  Your resume will be looked at for 30 seconds or less.”

“Listen to that little voice in your head telling you if something is right or not.  I’m happier now that I’m maintaining a work-life balance then in the first few years after college when I was working 60-hour weeks.  I wish I could look my former self in the eye and tell him not to worry too much.  Even if the years after school are really difficult, remember to look up, be thankful, open, honest, and appreciate the moments.  Life is generous.  Don’t fall prey to too much fear.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

Santiago Sinisterra

Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr, 14 min.), or download it.

Left Berklee in 2008 just a few credits shy of graduating (Santiago finished up and officially “graduated” in 2010.), with a major in Music Production & Engineering.  Principal instrument:  Voice

Position:  Director of Marketing Strategy at Zooka Creative, a “360” (or “soup-to-nuts”) marketing agency based in San Jose, California.  Santiago and the four people he supervises come up with the crux of each marketing campaign–the target audience, the media to use, etc.

Overview:  Santiago spent his first 6 years after Berklee working in music:  2 years as assistant to a composer in Miami, then after that tapered off 2 years living at home and gigging.  Between his large amount of student debt and the modest income, he realized that a change was necessary.  He visited relatives, and met his now-wife, in Columbia to figure out what next, then went back to work for that composer, who now was doing a start-up making exercise videos.  Teaching himself video production, Santiago worked extremely long hours and made decent money doing everything at this two-person company, at one point moving to California to be with his fiancee.  When it became clear that Santiago’s efforts would not be more than modestly compensated, he looked for work elsewhere.

Hired as a temporary contractor to do videos for Zooka, he got along so well with one of their top customers that the customer, on her own initiative, told the head of Zooka to give Santiago a job.  Santiago soon found his job was more customer-relations and design than video, so he transitioned into account management.  Hard work led to a promotion a couple of years later when his supervisor left the company.

 

You can see Santiago’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “I love that marketing helps me express my need to create.  All marketing campaigns really are akin to production in music–logistics, feel, making sure you’re speaking to the audience the way that sort of audience want to be spoken to.  Marketing also has allowed me to make a decent living while doing it.”

“I don’t recommend working 18-hour days, as I did working with the exercise video start-up, but the ethos of ‘I’m going to work my ass off and do it right’ paid large dividends in my current job.”

“Music helped me go into marketing.  It’s an amazing focal point to study becuase it gives your mind such malleability.  My education is more valuable than that of most of my peers.  Most folks just learned about things passively, but while in school, I MADE stuff!”

“People say don’t be afraid to fail, but more importantly, don’t be afraid to know that the answers may NOT be inside your head.  You were fearless to chosoe music as a career, be equally fearless in getting the help you need.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Kyle Billings

Listen to the interview (approx. 50 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2014 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  guitar.

Position:  Product designer.  Currently working independently in the San Francisco area as a freelance contractor for multiple companies including POWr, financial, and biotech.

Overview:  Early in his last year as a Berklee student, Kyle started to go to meetings hosted by intelligent.ly Boston, a community for people involved in high-tech startups.  Between getting to know the people and some experience designing websites for other Berklee students, Kyle got a part-time  job building out a website for a company in Rhode Island “Fortunately my job was remote. I’d go there every Wednesday and get my weekly assignment.  I’d spend much of the week frantically looking at Code Academy and Stack Overflow to teach myself how to do what I was supposed to do.”
Upon graduation, Kyle moved to San Francisco for a promised job  which fell through.  However, Kyle immediately reached out a person from that Rhode Island company who was very well-connected.  He emailed his entire network, putting in the good word for Kyle.  Kyle immediately got 8 interviews in S.F. alone, one of which led to a job as as web designer with Gone.   Shortly after starting there, Kyle went beyond the parameters of his official job to suggest and help implement a major overhaul of their user interface, which led to their revenue more-than-doubling!  This got Kyle a promotion to Director of Product Design.  However, much of Gone was based on Argentina, and Kyle wanted to work with people more personally, so after around a year and a half he left to do contract work with local companies.

 

You can see Kyle’s LinkedIn profile here.

Choice quotes:  “Everyone at a company thinks in their own siloed ways:  marketers, founders, developers. etc.  My role is to take all the work & constraints that everyone has and mash them all together into a one package  that looks good, is branded, feels good to use, makes money, and meets business move forward.    I work with everyone’s motivations to put something together than everyone can be proud of.”

“I love how varied my job it.  I can do something that’s both technical but also human, personable, empathetic.  It’s valuable for me to learn as much as I can.  I do things that I enjoy and it’s also valuable for my position–I do a better job when I talk to people.  I do well at a job that’s so ME!”

“All these things I learned at Berklee in the context in music stayed with me and I can surprise people with my ability to be empathetic and big picture but also detail-oriented–which is exactly what music requires!”

“When I first started working in this field, I had ‘impostor syndrome’ initially and doubted myself, thinking I was getting away with faking it and didn’t know what I was doing.  It took a while to realize I was doing my job well.  One thing I wish Berklee would do is to get us to trust ourselves and know that we’ll do just fine in industries beyond music.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

Andy Zhang

Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr 19 min) or download it.

Graduated in 2006 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  bass.

Position:  Research Engineer for Linekong, a company that builds gaming apps.  Andy is a “full stack” programmer, dealing with all aspects of the software, and specializing on the chatbot function.  He also does math and algorithms, and on his own time meets weekly with others to explore deep learning by machines and artificial intelligence.

 

Overview:  Andy’s plan was to become an entertainment lawyer.  He finished Berklee in two years, spent two years travelling and temping, then went to law school.  Midway through law school he realized that he disliked the rigid culture and lack of creativity that being a lawyer entailed, nor did “prestige professions,” such as management consultant, have any appeal.  Andy finished his law degree, but decided to move home and figure out what sort of career really would make him happy.  Andy started going to meetups of people in tech startups, while using google to teach himself computer programming and building a dating app and volunteering with an angel investor.  He ended up going to Cincinnati to work at a high-tech “incubator” for his own company that was building a new dating app, but failed to attract additional investment and ran out of money.  Using the last bit of the money to move to San Francisco, Andy started a frenetic job search.  Six weeks later, he had a job “at the bottom of the totem pole” doing customer support, but his boss let him do his own programming projects as well.  After being there for half a year, Andy had learned all he had to know, and with minimal effort got his first job as a software engineer.  He has switched jobs since then, following his boss to different companies.

 

You can see Andy’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice Quotes: “I love the work-style and lifestyle of being in high tech.  The workplace is very informal, relaxed, and we have lots of freedom.  The lifestyle features decent hours, and I don’t take the stresses of work home unless I want to.   I also like that there’s as much intellectual challenge as I seek–there are always new things to learn and apply!”

“I always liked the ‘structured creativity’ of music.  Professional services such as being in law lose that, as they consider any deviation bad.  But high tech has it–deviation could be bad, but it also could be brilliant!”

“Interviews are tougher if you don’t have a Computer Science degree or a lot of experience–I was grilled hard.  So I spent a ton of time preparing for each interview.”

“While I could be anti-social, Berklee’s ensembles and group projects taught me how to get along and work with people of all different backgrounds and skill levels.  Not working well with people is a common impediment for engineers, but thanks to Berklee it’s not one I suffer from.”

 

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

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Mark Schafer

Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr 9 min) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2009 with a degree is Music Business.  Principal Instrument: guitar.

Position:  CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software administrator and sales analyst at Yesware, Inc.  Mark customizes the SalesForce software platform to assist salespeople, which includes writing computer code.  Roughly 1/4 of his job involves an analyst role, looking at sales data and putting together reports.

In his spare time, Mark stays involved with music as a volunteer by co-running SOFAR Boston.

 

Overview:  As his final-semester internship was about to end, the Music Business Dept. recommended Mark for a sales job with Sonicbids.  Mark interviewed there, and everyone agreed he’d do better in a customer support role.  Sometime later, his friend who managed the SalesForce software left the company and recommended Mark as his replacement.  By early 2012, Sonicbids was feeling financially shaky, so Mark searched online for new jobs, mostly not involving music, and landed one at Brightcove as the SalesForce administrator and sales analyst.  In the summer of 2014 a former colleague who had left Brightcove to work at Yesware took Mark out to lunch and suggested that he work at Yesware, doing similar stuff, which Mark was happy to do.

 

You can see Mark’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “My job is basically learning how things work in detail and then designing my own systems to handle all these subtleties.  Lots of problem solving:  they tell me a problem, and I get to be creative and figure out a solution, the build & support it.”

“The challenge with collecting data on sales is it’s a very human process.  I need to design something that’s easy to use but very tailored to the company’s process, so people know what do.  You want the software to be set up to where sales people can look at a lead and know right away what’s going on and what needs to happen next.”

“Looking for my next job from Sonicbids, I wanted to stay in Boston, but being in music wasn’t a priority.  My day-to-day job at Sonicbids really had nothing directly to do with music anyway.”

“Do as much as possible and don’t wait for the perfect thing to come along. Even if that first job isn’t what you wanted to do, you’ll learn a lot and a lot about what you do & don’t like and may even discover something you really like.”

“At Berklee I figured out how much an analytical person I am and how much I love digging into details…I had the best time at Berklee, it was such a positive experience and such a crazy creative int’l community.  I don’t regret for a second having gone there.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

Priya Prins

Listen to the interview (approx. 49 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2008 with a degree in Music Production and Engineering.  Principal Instrument:  Voice.

Position:  Production Assistant for the Costume Designer at Marvel Studios.   Priya deals with “digital assets”  — computer images of what the costume will look like.  Priya does admin/communications-work to get the right custom materials for the costumes.  And fetches lunches and does whatever the lead costumer asks her to do.  Priya works in (non-union) contract-based positions, so switches exact job descriptions and even employers on a semi-regular basis.

Priya also has a side job as an Interior Designer (self-employed).

 

Overview:  After graduation, Priya moved to L.A. and worked as a singer for Interscope Records, working some side jobs (dog-walker, personal assistant) to make ends meet.  By 2012, she was unhappy with her situation–the odd hours, the difficulty getting paid–and decided to switch careers while staying in L.A. and continuing to work.  After exploring options, she enrolled at FIDM ( Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising ) to get her Associates Degree (AA) in Visual Communications.  She did several interesting internships during her year-long program, discovering what she did and did not like to do.  Just after graduating in 2015, Priya did the flowers from a friend’s wedding, and a costume designer, a wedding guest, was impressed.  She contacted Priya several days later and offered Priya her first production assistant job!  Hard, high quality work there has led to other opportunities in the industry.

You can see Priya’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice Quotes:  “I like being on my toes and how different each day is from the previous.  I like making things and watching these costumes being built is really exciting!”

“Most classmates at FIDM were 17 or 18, and I was there as a 27-year-old. At first I was embarrassed, but I actually found it to be a huge asset, because I had life experience and to be a successful artist you have to really know yourself–something a lot of younger folks have trouble with.”

“Whatever you’re doing, work really hard and do an amazing job.  You never know who’s watching!  Show people you can pay attention to the little things and they’ll trust you not to mess up big things.”

“If you’re unhappy, you need to change things–they’re not going to change on their own!   Take every opportunity & side job you can.”

 

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

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Clay Southworth

Listen to the interview (approx. 49 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2008 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  Bass Guitar

Positions:  #1: Real Estate Agent at Willow Bend Real Estate, representing a vacation home community on Cape Cod (Massachusetts).
#2:  Entrepreneur/owner of Southworth Home Management.  Clay watches and maintains empty homes during the off season, and oversees renovations.
“On Cape Cod, the real estate business is busiest during the summer, and the property management is busiest during the winter, so between the two it’s a full time year-round thing.”

 

Overview:  Partway through Berklee, Clay decided that a music career wasn’t for him.  After graduating and spending most of a year in Australia, Clay returned to the United States.  A family connection (Clay’s father is a real estate developer.) got him a job selling real estate in New Hampshire, but the market was terrible and business was slow.  Clay moved to Bermuda, where he is originally from, and another connection got him a job in operations at a hotel there.  Clay worked hard for 3 years, spending little and saving a lot.  He wanted to get back to Cape Cod and into the second-home real estate business, so when a job opened up at Willow Bend Country Club, he took it–even though it was just working in the warehouse.  He started setting up his business.   8 months later an agent in their real estate agent went on pregnancy leave and he was the natural choice to fill in, and growing business allowed him to keep his job.

You can see his LinkedIn profile here.

Choice Quotes:  “Whether you’re selling a home or your management company, you have to know your product from every angle.  The more you can prove you know what you’re talking about, the more people will pay you for your services.”

“I enjoy doing something that fits my aptitudes.  I like talking to people, socializing, being on my feet & on the move, dealing with new things.  The money is pretty good too.”

“Berklee helped teach me to be creative, which helped me shape-shift my way through the business world.  Pam Kerensky’s web design class was really helpful., as was the Business Startups class.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.
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Doug Guttenberg

 

Listen to the interview (approx. 39 minutes) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2009 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  Bass Guitar.

Position:  Production Manager at TheLab., a multifaceted advertising agency which does advertising campaigns, images, and websites for clients.  Doug manages 9 people who handle the website production end of the business.

Overview:  Graduating in the middle of the awful 2009 recession, Doug had no job opportunities, but he was in the mailing list of Birthright Israel, where he found out about a very affordable 10-month Masters degree program administered by NYU but set in Tel Aviv, Israel.  10 months of studying, and successful gigging, in Tel Aviv, Doug got his degree.  He and his girlfriend (now wife) moved back to New York in 2010 and looked for jobs.  He didn’t have much luck sending out resumes, but a good high school friend worked for TAG Worldwide, another advertising agency, and personally introduced him to the president of the company, which led to a job doing photo production for advertising.  In 2014, after 3.5 years, TAG was acquired by another company and Doug felt undervalued, so he pursued new opportunties.  The president of TheLab had contacted him on LinkedIn, and Doug wrote him back, which led rapidly to an interview and a job in the web production department.  Hard work led to his promotion to manager, Doug’s current job, after two years.

You can see Doug’s LinkedIn profile here.

Choice Quotes:  “As a manager, I have the ability to see what everyone’s doing, but I try not to micromanage, as I’ve been on the other side of that.  I mostly deal with issues, problems, and questions that come up.  I also help with internal strategy and with getting new clients.”

“When looking for a job, talk to the people you know.  It really is about who you know what gets your foot in the door.  An organization puts up a posting and gets SO many hits.  Use your connections the best you can! If you really like how a job works, follow up with it–it’s easy just to get lost in the shuffle. Once your foot is in the door, you’ve got to work hard and do the absolute best you can.”

‘ The first thing I learned was print production.  There was a ton of terminology and various codes I had to master!  I asked a lot of questions and learned everything about that.  Learning is a lot of what gets me up in the morning–it’s awesome!  These days I’m learning more about web programming, and about being a manager.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

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Jonas Bergmann-Bjornsson

Listen to the interview (Approx. 36 min.) or download it.

Graduated in 2013 with a major in Film Scoring.  (Jonas also was President of Berklee’s Music Business Club.)  Principal Instrument:  Guitar

Position:  Executive Director of Gudrun Corp, the American branch of the Iceland-based Gudrun Publishing Group.  A family business with roughly twenty non-family employees, Gudrun produces books, websites, apps related to Vikings, as well as resources for tourists in Iceland.

Overview:  Jonas grew up with the business being part of his family life.  He start to work there when he was 11.  For a year before he came to Berklee, Jonas worked in London as a salesperson for the business.  After Berklee Jonas moved to New York and hoped to make a career composing, but it was taking too long to get established and after six months he was out of money, so he moved back to Iceland and joined back up with the family business, helping with marketing, then with product development.  Jonas moved back to the United States in 2015 in order to be with his now-wife, working remotely and setting up the American branch of Gudrun.

You can see Jonas’s LinkedIn Profile here.

Choice Quotes:  “I really enjoy the entrepreneurial aspects of my job.  A lot of effort goes into figuring out what else can we do.  I’m developing apps.  We’ll be coming up with websites.  I come up with new ideas; we do feasibility studies.  If it looks good we put it into production.  It’s very exciting to see an idea developed into a product.”

“The family business a lot more flexible than a standard job.  I don’t have to work exactly 9-5, but I’m thinking about it on weekends, evenings, etc.  I’m a co-owner, so I know that I’m going to do well if the company does well.”

“Don’t get hung up too much about the idea of what you wanted to be.  Do a lot of stuff–throw 10 things on the wall and one will stick.  That said, be very careful of ‘intern mills’ — internships which don’t pay anything.  Those can be a trap if you’re not careful.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

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Jared Winegrad

Listen to the interview (approx. 52 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2013 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  Voice

Principal at Cultivation Capital‘s (Financial Technology)  Fintech Growth Fund.  Working with three “Partners” on a $50,000,000+ fund Jared’s responsibilities include vetting new investment opportunities, supporting companies which they have invested in, and raising investment money.

 

Overview:  After graduation, Jared got an internship with now-defunct Flo Capital in Nashville, a venture/seed capital investment firm which had helped Kenny Chesney launch a brand of rum.  Jared was asked to do financial modeling.  “I was spending 50 hrs/week on my internship, and another 40/week trying to learn how to do what I was supposed to do.”  Three months later, he corrected the founder of his company about a financial issue, saving his own company big money, and soon thereafter was offered a job as a financial analyst at 60K/year.

Jared stayed there for 2.5 years, and sensed that Flo Capital was “circling the drain” so he started reaching out for other opportunities.  A good friend and former co-worker recommended him to one of the founders of the Fintech Growth Fund, which had not yet launched and they met.  Then in October 2015 Jared got laid off (along with half the company).  He reached out again to his contact and searched aggressively for new work, but he got the job.

You can view Jared’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice Quotes:  “It’s great to wake up every morning and think ‘What am I going to see today?’  How can I help this company out?  Every day is different.  There’s always something new.  There’s always a fire to put out, but if you’re surrounded by good people it’s not a stressful thing–it’s an exciting thing!”

“NEVER tell someone you can’t do something in an interview.  Believe in yourself and your ability to be better and learn to do something someone asks you to do.”

“The thing about venture capital investing is we do well if and only if they do well. A good investor brings insight, experience, and connections.  Not just a check.”

“Normally people working at fund principals have ten years of experience and an MBA.  What got me the job at the Fintech Growth Fund—-was that I had seen a company fail.  People who have only seen success don’t know how to spot a red flag.  I know to be paranoid enough to poke holes in some entrepreneurs optimism.”

“Doing music non-professionally is the best thing that happened to my music.  Wnen you take the pressure off and don’t worry about the effect on your career, it’s a more enjoyable experience.  I write & perform better.”

 

See the full Index of Successful Berklee Grads.