Graduated in 2019 with a major in Music Business. Principal instrument: voice.
Position: Customer Experience Coordinator and Data Analyst at On Board Experiential (“OBE”), a company with close to 200 employees that specializes in putting on events such as large corporate gatherings, networking events, small festivals, etc. Medora is the one person there doing what she does, her job being split between a project management role and a data analytics role. She helps a bit with events directly, but spends most of her time, particularly in the off-season, working with spreadsheets and analyzing costs and so forth.
Overview: After finishing up Berklee in December 2019, she moved home to Orange County, California. Medora applied to many music industry jobs and had a promising interview, but them the pandemic hit and nobody was hiring. Because of her fiance Medora wanted to stay in her area, and with music jobs few and far between she broadened her job search. A random application led to an administrative position at a small music school, but the job wasn’t great and she continued to look. Soon she was working part time at the House of Blues (She had worked at the Boston branch while at Berklee.) and had another part-time job. In the spring of 2022, though a connection Medora was able to work at Coachella, then at a local food festival which was run by OBE. Apparently OBE got excellent feedback about her work, becuase someone from human resources encouraged Medora to apply for what became her current position.
You can see Medora’s LinkedIn profile here.
Choice Quotes: “But I love the company I work for. Even when the work is hard, we still have a really fun time. I feel like I excel with onsite customer service–I’m extroverted and that helps. The work is also interesting and challenging. Being able to solve a puzzle and help the big project, that’s gratifying. I also like how my company is invested in me and how I do in my own career.”
“Trust your gut–I had interviews pre-pandemic and wish I’d trusted my gut. If you don’t like going to work every day and what you doesn’t bring you any joy, that’s not the right job for you even if they pay huge money.”
“Berklee taught me the importance of being comfortable with a fast pace of work and things changing. And the importance of being dependable”.
“Event companies are using A.I. — Live Nation is spending a ton on A.I. to market shows to you. Being a data analyst and being open to that opens oneself up to a much larger pool or opportunities. Increasingly, data analysis and operations will go hand in hand.”
“The job market is really hard. It took me 2.5 years from graduation to land this, my first full-time job. If you don’t get your “first big girl/boy job” straight out of college and it takes a while, that’s OK–I put a real knock on myself and it hurt my mental health.”
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