Category: Other Successful Berklee Alumni

Mark Bruning

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

 

Graduated in 2012 with a major in Contemporary Writing & Production (CWP).  Principal instrument:  Bass Guitar.

 

Position:  Software Engineer at Ensono, which provides computer services to mid-and-large size companies.   Mark is on a 6-person team builds & maintains the front-end interfaces for customers to interact with the company’s services.

 

Overview:  Mark always liked computers, taking some classes while in high school.  He considered studying computer science in college, but chose Berklee instead.  Shortly after graduating Berklee he parted ways with the studio her worked at, and had a tough time finding a music industry job.  Waiting tables for money, he figured he might go back to school, then discovered MIT’s Open Courseware, where courses are available online for free.  He took the introductory computer science class, and found it challenging but enjoyable and sensed a possible career path.  Mark resolved to teach himself web development, reading books in the Missing Manual series.  In part as a teaching tool, he rebuilt the websites of his father’s business’s website, as well as that of another family member, which lead to a bit of money and a lot of knowledge.  In the summer of 2013 he and his now-wife moved to Illinois for a fresh start.  He got a part-time job working for his uncle, a computer consultant, doing more computer-related things though not web.

By the spring of 2014 work with his uncle was tapering off and Mark wanted to get back into web development.  He went on craigslist and started applying for jobs.  A recruiter brought him in to do a large number of tests and skill assessments so that appropriate jobs could be sent his way.  Soon he was offered a temporary contracting job at The Pampered Chef as a front-end web developer, which quickly led to a full-time job offer.  In late 2014 they did a re-org, which led to less work to do, so Mark took the quiet hours at work (plus some at home) to figure out more systems and he was transferred onto the e-commerce tech team, where he learned more.  But by late 2015 the culture of the company was changing and he wanted to leave.  A colleague and friend mentioned that his former company, Ensono, was looking for software developers, so Mark applied and got the job in early 2016.

 

You can see Mark’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “Developing software is an art form–it’s creative problem-solving with very tangible results.  We solve real-life problems creatively using code.  I get to develop cool things–I get to create!”

“Anyone thinking about going into tech, be the “T” person–where your knowedge and skills have both depth in one area and breadth.  Tech is a very experience-driven industry.  It’s very competitive the higher you go, and it’s a lot of work, but get out there and do it.  Build stuff.  Make a hub account and code and show folks your code.  It’s a much easier sell in an interview to be able to show stuff you’ve done than just claiming without evidence that you can do it.”

“There are a lot of sacrifices that you have to do in order to make it in your profession.  That’s even tougher in music when a lot of people don’t really make it.  I’m lucky to have found an equal if not larger passion in a field which is much bigger and in which nearly everyone who has the skills finds a good job.  I’m not saying just to follow the money, but you have to think about what you love and also allows you to do the other things that you love.  There’s a balance.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Scott Brown

 

Listen to the interview (approx. 53 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2006 with a major in Music Business.  Principal instrument:  trumpet.  (He also played guitar.)

 

Position:  Intellectual Property Attorney at Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.  Scott is part of a 6-person team.  He analyses whether things can be trademarked and files for trademarks, he does similar work for copyrights, and he reviews marketing materials to make sure they don’t violate any laws.

 

Overview:  While at Berklee Scott decided he wanted to be an entertainment lawyer.  He worked at Newbury Comics the year after graduating for a bit of experience and applied to law school.  He was admitted to Ohio State’s excellent law school, where he paid (discounted) in-state tuition.  While at law school, he “fell out of love” with being an entertainment lawyer, realizing that “it really isn’t much different than any other small business lawyer,” but he became very interested in trademarks.

Graduating from law school in 2011, he found himself without a job, but someone he met at a trademark conference referred him to a job at a (now-defunct) new law firm that specialized in high-tech start ups.  He got a job that September and worked there for several years, while continuing to network with trademark lawyers in the hope of getting a trademark attorney job.  Eventually, in late 2014 one of these mentors he’d met learned of an open position at Nationwide, suggested he apply, and vouched for him.  Scott got the job, and has been there since.

 

You can see Scott’s LinkedIn profile here.  Scott invites anyone interested in going into law, or recently out of law school, to contact him, either via LinkedIn or via email (Listen to the interview for that email address.)

 

Choice quotes:  “Trademark law and branding are fascinating!  It’s kind of the fun stuff of life to me:  music , art.  It’s the legal parts of all that.  Reading about trademark and copyright law is interesting stuff, and I enjoy keeping up on it and don’t have to force myself at all to do it.”

“”I was good at school.  Being a lawyer is almost the same as being good at school: read, study, apply it.”

“Working as a lawyer in-house (rather than at a law firm) was the right choice for me. I get to focus on one client, and it’s a less demanding lifestyle in terms of hours per week and stress.  Another nice thing about working in-house is that you can take a little bit longer and be more detail oriented when filing for a trademark, considering what will happen 3, 5, or even 10 years from now.  At a law firm you bill by the hour so you have to just get it done quickly and move on.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Loren Khulusi

Listen to the interview (approx 1 hr, 3 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2008 with a major in Music Production and Engineering (MP&E).  Principal Instrument:  guitar.

 

Position:  Product Manager at Dollar Shave Club.  Loren works on internal software tools built and used by the company.  He plans new features for the software, figures out what to prioritize and do at various times, reports on progress to the higher-ups, and coordinates with the engineers to get things done.

Overview:  After graduating Berklee, Loren moved to L.A. and worked for two and a half years, unpaid, for a music producer.  He toiled for long hours, and part of his responsibilities included building websites.  He eventually left to try to be a freelance music producer, but couldn’t get nearly enough decently-paid work.  Meanwhile, “people were chasing me to build them websites.”  At some point, Loren thought hard about his career direction and what could make him money.  He put away the recording gear and decided to be a freelance web designer instead.

Six months later, Loren was making some money doing freelance work, but still not very much, so when an old Berklee friend posted on Facebook that his (fashion) company was looking for a full-time web designer, Loren applied.  He got the job.  Roughly a year later, the company announced that they were closing down the small e-commerce department that Loren worked in in order to partner with Amazon.  Loren applied for jobs and reached out to recruiters, one of whom got him an interview with the Dollar Shave Club, which led to a job as a web developer, soon talked with building functional prototypes of websites.  Loren liked being an engineer fine, but found the product management job really interesting and though it looked fun, so he asked the people about it and how he could transition to it.  After roughly 1.5 years as an engineer at this company, he was offered a position in product management.

 

You can see Loren’s LinkedIn profile here.  Loren invites anyone interested in Product Management to email him at lkhulusi <at> gmail <dot> com.

 

Choice Quotes:  “Having an artistic background, I really enjoy communicating with the engineers and bring a vision to life.  It’s a lot like being a music producer, working in a studio, findingthe right people, bringing people together, herding cats, and making something great things happen.”

“I never thought I’d be doing a 9-5, but here I am and I’m happy.  It took me a while to adjust.  When I was at Berklee I thought working 9-5 wasn’t cool.  I was an idiot back then.  If lifestyle, financial security, and being able to eat is important to you, a steady job really can change your perspective.  I went from poor and struggling to making a very comfortable salary–my life changed overnight!”

“MP&E is a tough major, but it’s great prep for non-music jobs.  You just have a get shit done and time is very scarce.  That very much translates to life:  nobody’s holding your hand and you’re responsible for your destiny–you have a figure out a way to do what you need to do.”

“Never turn down an opportunity, even if you think it’s something you didn’t want to pursue.  In the beginning I wasn’t very interested in web development–I’d rather have been doing music–but someone told me, ‘Don’t fight it.  You never know where it will take you.'”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

Adam Kirschner

Listen to the interview (approx. 45 min.), or download it.

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

 

Position:  Senior Account Manager (Business-to-Business Sales) at StitcherAds.  StitcherAds is a software that helps companies market their products on Facebook.  Working for a combination of salary and commission, Adam brings in new business by cultivating relationships with new clients and working with both companies and advertising firms to build campaigns.  He speaks with clients, talks to Facebook reps, looks over contracts, puts together “execution strategies” to optimize company websites to work with their tools.  “It’a new, exciting field.  No two days are the same.”

 

Overview:  While at Berklee, Adam did several internships, including at a music publishing company in New York City.  That company hired him as an office manager, but, per Adam’s own admission, he wasn’t very good at it, as he was very interested in music publishing but not in the minutiae of running an office, so after three months he was let go.  Tending bar part-time, he looked first for music industry jobs, but after a month he was feeling the financial pressure to get a job, so broadened his search.  He found a tech sales company Single Platform, cold calling small businesses to sell their $79 software.  “Sales is tough, but they’ll take college grads with no experience.”

Seven months later, Adam moved to Austin, Texas to be with his girlfriend, figuring correctly that Austin’s burgeoning tech sector down there would make a mob search pretty easy.  Within a month he was working for Memory Blue, which did cold-call software sales for other companies on demand.  After a few months, he was working on behalf of StitcherAds, and he did a good enough job for a couple of months that StitcherAds decided to take him on as their own employee in January, 2015.

 

You can see Adam’s LinkedIn Profile here.

 

Choice Quotes:   “I’m on the leading edge of an exciting space, such as digital advertising.  Every day new information comes out, new types of ads, new clients.  It’s totally different now from even a year ago.  It’s a fast-moving industry and we’re always on the edge of our seat!”

“A large spectrum of personality types can succeed in sales.  I’m very outgoing, but I’ve seen more quiet, reserved folks do just as well.”

“It’s really nice to be able to make my living, pay the bills, save some cash, and at the same time I can playing all the music I want without having to worry about music making me enough money.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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King Yan Kwok

Listen to the interview (approx. 40 min.) or download it.

 

Left Berklee in 2007 (completed her internship and officially graduated in early 2009) with a major in Music Therapy.  Principal Instrument:  piano.

Position:  Multilingual Speech Language Pathologist at the Boston (Massachusetts) Public Schools.  King works with students who have speech problems, half her students speaking Cantonese of Mandarin, the other half “a bit of everyone.”  Travelling to several schools, and working with all ages, King diagnoses issues and works with students who mostly have speech/articulation issues.

Overview.  After leaving Berklee, King did an internship in California at a veterans home, then moved to New York City to teach piano at a music school Musispire and intern (unpaid) at the Institute for Music Neurologic Function, where soon afterward she was offered a part-time job as a researcher.  She often worked alongside speech pathologists King did that for a year, but grew tired of the long commutes and unpredictable pay (She had to go to people’s homes and got paid by the session), so after a year she worked at the music school full time.

A couple of years later, King decided that she needed a Masters Degree to help her career.  She debated among clinical psychology, music education, and speech pathology, and did extensive research on careers, including locations of jobs and expected growth of the fields.  She settled on speech pathology as it provided a good income and high likelihood of employment without requiring a doctorate.  In 2011 she entered the Masters in Speech Pathology program at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), graduating in 2013.  Part of that program involved doing many “internships,” one of which was in Boston, and she was encouraged to apply to her current position as her ability to speak multiple languages was a real strength.

 

You can see King’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice Quotes:  “It’s rewarding to see a student grow from saying a word or two to having a real conversation.  In this job I can utilize my skills and give back to my community.”

“I get the same pay scale as teachers, and work the same hours as teachers.  Around 6.5 hours per day.  I get summers off and all the snow days and holidays.  Unlike most teachers I don’t have homework to grade, though I do have to write up progress reports.”

“Berklee’s Music Therapy’s guidelines of  being flexible, creative, and spontaneous serve me really well in what I do today.”

“Do your research!  Realize how important it is just to know which jobs are growing in this country.  Think about where you want to live, as that influences what would be a good job to learn.  For example, it’s hard to make a living gigging in Boston.”

“People interest in speech pathology should do their research as well.  Look at the responsibilities and see it it’s what you want to do. Email a school, hospital, nursing home, or clinic, and ask to shadow a speech pathologist for day.  That will help you see exactly what the job is about.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

Stephanie Olmanni

Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr 21 min) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2008 with majors in Film Composition and Electronic Production & Design (then called Music Synthesis).  Principal Instrument:  voice.

 

Position:  Registered Nurse at UCLA Health, Santa Monica, a large teaching hospital.  Stephanie works on a geriatric (elderly) floor.  She started in 2016, so as of the interview is in her first year, which is a “residency.”  However, unlike medical residencies for doctors who are expected to leave when they end, nurses are welcome to stay.

————

UPDATE Feb. 2018:  Stephanie has been working at UCLA Health for close to two years.  “In the past 6 months, I’ve noticed a huge shift. The work is no longer about mastering skills – they have become second nature now – and nursing feels more like an art. I am constantly inspired and filled with confidence and passion for what I do for a living.”  She also reports, “Despite California’s high cost of living, I’m financially comfortable and have already paid off over $20,000 of nursing school debt.”

In addition to her regular nursing tasks in the geriatric ward, Stephanie is presenting her research at nursing conferences and is taking on more leadership roles among the nurses on her floor.  “When leaving music and deciding on a new career, I always imagined what my ideal future would look like. And looking around at my life right now, I can honestly say it is all that and more!”

———-

 

Overview:  Upon graduating Berklee, Stephanie moved to L.A. and sought work as a composer.  The chair of the Film Composition dept. connected her to a Berklee alum who composed for television and needed an assistant.  For six years, she worked for him, doing many different tasks in their two-person outfit:  composition, recording, orchestrating sessions, administrative tasks.  However, within a couple of years Stephanie realized that she was unhappy with the work.  An extrovert, she missed working with other people and the extremely long hours meant she had little life outside of work.  Her mother had been a nurse, Stephanie realized that nursing had what she wanted in a career:  working with others, helping other people, opportunities for career growth and to learn new things, and decent hours.  She volunteered in hospitals and confirmed that she loved it.

For her last three years assisting the composer, Stephanie took required prerequisite classes at night, and also volunteered at hospitals!  Finally, with those done, she applied to and was accepted at Johns Hopkins University “where they are as passionate about medicine as Berklee is about music.”  She got a half-scholarship, was president of their Geriatric Society, and earned a Bachelors of Science degree in Nursing. She wanted to go back to California and work in geriatrics, so she applied to work on a geriatric floor of the prestigious, extremely competitive UCLA hospital and was hired!

Music played a key role in Stephanie getting her job!  In California, the process for certification as a nurse, which in other states is a 1-2 week processing time, can take a full year, forcing newly-graduated nurses to sit idle and not work–awful!  Stephanie did a music video, a parody of “Hello” by Adele, which went viral!  It got her on the news, drew attention to the problem, and also got her the assistance of a state senator who ensured that she got her certification in time (It still took a good 6 months.) to start her job.  Here’s the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDt_xnVu8Mc

You can see Stephanie’s LinkedIn Profile here.

 

Choice quotes:   “However fried I’m feeling after 14 hours I feel really accomplished and fulfilled about what I did that day.  It’s also awesome to just work 3 days per week and have 4 days off!”

“It really hits you when you’re at your first job and you’re not working on mannequins anymore.  When I did music for TV people acted like things were life or death, but giving my patients the care and medicine they need really IS life or death!”

“I don’t regret for a second going to Berklee.  I’m so proud, and people I meet are really impressed by my background.  My friends and I look back on our time at Berklee as among the most special years of our lives”

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Ryan Driscoll

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

 

Graduated in 2011 with a major in Music Business.  Principal Instrument:  Drums.

Position:  Patent Paralegal at Harvard University’s Office of Technology Development, which helps patent and market new inventions by Harvard faculty and post-docs.  Ryan assists with the patenting process, and also works with computers to upgrade their database.

Overview:  In late 2011, Ryan interned in L.A. at artist management  That experience taught him that the music industry, at least that part of it, wasn’t for him.  Long hours, low pay, and with luck and being at the right place at the right time playing such a large role determining one’s career path.  He moved back to Massachusetts, and started applying to large numbers of mostly non-music jobs.  A friend of a friend got him a job at Heritage Marketing and Incentives, where he used templates and their software to build promotional websites and performed other administrative duties.  It was good experience, but the pay was low, so after a year he searched for a better job.

Ryan founds the Harvard job on their website and applied, getting the “patent coordinator” job.   Others on his team had paralegal certificates, so Ryan enrolled in the program, the equivalent of one full semester of work (spread out over a larger time period) and was promoted to patent paralegal.

 

You can see Ryan’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “Technology transfer is the convergence of business and law, which is essentially what music business is.  It’s the same principles, though related more to intellectual property as a whole rather than just specifically to music.”

“I like being part of the tech-transfer environment.  The culture is like that of a a startup company.  Just seeing something coming out of a lab turning into a real product or company is exciting and I like to contribute to it as I can. ”

“I got my job at Harvard because my AEG Live internship in L.A. had me going through contracts and doing some clerical stuff for the legal dept.  I combined that experience with the skills I’d picked up at my first job (Heritage), and emphasized the ability to do many things at once with attention to detail.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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J. Russell

Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr, 3 min.) or download it.

 

Graduated in 2006 with a major in Music Production and Engineering (MP&E).  Principal Instrument:  guitar.

Position:  Software “Field” Sales  Representative (Business-to-Enterprise), officially titled “Account Executive.”  J. works for a large software company (details in the audio) and sells various products to very large retail companies, mostly in New York.  Working out his home in Massachusetts, J. spends about half his time travelling to customers and working on very large (six or seven-figure) deals, and the other half communicating and preparing.

Overview:  By the time he graduated Berklee, J. realized he wasn’t interested in the standard career path of a recording engineer, but he did like business.  Working in landscaping and odd jobs for a year, he decided that going to business school would help his career path, whether it was starting his own music-based company or working outside of music.  He spent two years as a management trainee at Hertz Rent-A-Car to get business experience, and was accepted to Babson, where he received his MBA in 2009.

By the time he graduated, J. realized that he really wanted to do software sales.  He went on craigslist and got a job doing a combination of cutomer support and sales at Plum Line, then a year later, hoping to get more of a pure sales role, he applied to his current company and was hired as an “inside sales rep” –working in an office to generate leads.  After a year J. was promoted to outside sales rep. which he has been doing ever since.

 

(LinkedIn profile not available.)

 

Choice Quotes:   “I like that my job is very challenging; no two days are the same.  I’m the quarterback, trying to figure out a way to close the deal.  It’s not simple–there are an infinite number of variables–but it’s fascinating to try to figure out the optimal process.  That was what attracted me to music as well–it’s not binary, but the trick is organizing the ambiguity….I don’t know where else you really get that skill set of organizing ambiguity except through the arts.”

“it’s a great job. I  really like it!  It’s a lot of work, a lot of stress.  All consuming, and many times you lose deals.  But when you win it can be really good financially.  It’s maybe a 50/50 salary/commission split.  The goal is to live on your base salary, and then any commissions go into savings.”

“I work on at most ten deals per year.  It can take up to 2 years to close a deal, so there’s upside after an amount of time.  But expect a lean first couple of years.  Also, when you start out in sales you often have a less good territory, so it takes a while to get started.”

“My music background helped me stand out an an MBA candidate… When I first started Business School I doubted myself a bit because I was the one music person there, but I realized that there was no reason to do so.  Music is a different field; it doesn’t reflect what you can do.  I did have to work hard, though.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Charlotte Moore

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

 

Graduated in 2005 with majors in Music Business and Music Production and Engineering (MP&E).  Principal instrument:  vibrophone.

Position:  Bidding Manager at Double Negative, a large visual effects company that produces effects for movies. Charlotte works with prospective clients to detail the work, then works with department managers to produce and accurate estimate of the effort required.  She then submits the bids “In order to keep over a thousand special effects people who work here employed.”

UPDATE December 2016:  A few months after doing her interview, Charlotte was promoted at her company!  She will be production manager on an upcoming film Meg., and visual effects producer on another upcoming film Hostiles.

Overview:  Upon graduating Berklee Charlotte did three (unpaid) internships while working for money as an usher.  One was at a recording studio, which helped her figure out that “The non-stop lifestyle of recording albums wasn’t for me–I once worked 24 hours straight, and didn’t think I could do it in the long run.” She sent out many resumes, including to Boston-based studio Soundtrack, and was offered a job as a receptionist. Charlotte took the job, seeing it as a “foot in the door,” and soon took over accounting when someone resigned, then moving on to handling payments and a myriad of other business-end tasks, while taking night classes toward an MBA from Suffolk University.

By 2008, Charlotte wanted to move to California, and was sending out resumes.  She got a job offer from Skywalker Sound.  Starting as a production accountant, over the next 6.5 years she finished her MBA and was promoted twice to Associate Producer of Bidding, and then Associate Produces of Bidding & Scheduling.  At that point, a recruiter for Sony reached out to her to do finance and bidding for visual effects in Vancover.  Charlotte took the job, then a year later took the opportunity to work for Double Negative in her current position.

 

You can see Charlotte’s LinkedIn profile here.  Charlotte encourages Berklee graduates interested in working in the business end of film to contact her via LinkedIn.  She has learned many things, knows many people, and is happy to make a connection!

 

Choice Quotes:  ‘I enjoy working with  the artists and seeing how it goes from nothing to the most amazing thing you’ve seen on the screen!  I’m lucky to be able to work with people who are just THAT talented.”

“I read a lot of (movie) scripts. Sometimes that’s all I get.  Sometimes I get concept art, scene breakdowns, or even storyboards.  I spend a lot of time with Excel–I’m bidding down to the detail of how many days of work each facet of the work is going to take.  I’ll do the first pass estimate, then run everything by the supervisors of those who are doing the work.”

“It’s rare for people in film to have MBA’s, and it has been really valuable.   If you have that education you then can discuss why something doesn’t work and say what you would do instead–and you can articulate it well and be taken seriously.  I feel a lot more confident at work and am glad I did it.”

“If you’re first coming out of school and want to work in this field, look for production runner or production assistant jobs.  IF you see people doing something good that you’d like to  learn tell people.  Most of the time people are happy to help you out and talk about what they do.  Talk to recruiters about what you’re interested in.”

 

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.

 

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Cam Bjork

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

 

Graduated in 2015 with a major in Electronic Production & Design (EPD).  Principal Instrument:  bass guitar.

Position:  Business Development Representative ( business-to-business salesperson) at Bevspot.  Cam works in the office, cold-calling restaurants/bars to get them interested in Bevspot’s software, which makes it much easier to track their inventory of alcoholic drinks and order the appropriate amounts at the appropriate times.  He partners with a field representative, and earns a base salary plus commission.

Update October 2016:  Shortly after the interview left Bevspot to take on  a similar Business Development Representative (business-to-business sales) role at Nexthink.

Overview:  Cam initially went to UMASS-Boston to study business, thinking he’d go into software sales like his father.  However, he transferred to Berklee because he wanted to explore his creative/musical side.  Cam worked various restaurant jobs (busboy, server) while in college.  By his last year at Berklee he decided that, while he loved music, he wasn’t convinced it would make a good career path.  His father got him a part-time job doing cold-call sales during his last semester, which went fine.  Shortly before graduation he applied to another software company where his father knew people and could make an introduction.  He got the job and started right after graduation.  However, he didn’t feel he fit in well with the culture at that company, so some months later when a friend from Berklee who worked at Bevspot mentioned that they were looking for Business Development Reps, Cam expressed interest.  They talked, and he got the job–Cam’s restaurant industry experience also helped.

 

You can see Cam’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

Choice quotes:  “Sales is very difficult, very challenging.  But I view every call as a sort of performance.  using that creative musician mentality of trying new things and not getting too deep into my comfort zone.  A pitch that might work with one person won’t with another.”
“Sales has different techniques, and there are things you can do to make yourself better, but it’s mostly in the way you present yourself.  Believe in yourself and project that every way you can–tone of voice, how you walk–be confident.  Ask open-ended questions; for example, ‘What problems do you have as a business?  How are you trying so solve them?’  Be conversational, but also concise.”

“At Berklee, I had to present very personal stuff (my music) to my peers and people I barely knew.   It toughened me up for the sales role.  I’m up for pushing forward even if someone’s trying to get me off the phone.”

“EPD gave me a great understanding about the relationship between software & hardware.  I had to learn about so many different systems.  It made me good at picking up software quickly, which has helped a lot with my software sales jobs.”

“Most musicians never get commercial traction, and that’s OK because at the end of the day they’re still creatively expressing themselves and contributing to this world.  It’s not giving up; your relationship with music just changes.”

“If I ever want to to get my music out there, my sales experience has given me more of an ability to push my music to record labels.”

 

See the full index of Successful Berklee Grads.