Successful Berklee Alumni #182: Caitlin Clifford

Listen to the interview or download it.

Graduated in 2012 with a major in Music Business. Principal Instrument: voice.

Position: (Housing) Starts Coordinator at Toll Brothers, a large residential housing developer with thousands of employees nationwide. In this administrative role at their Houston branch office, Caitlin’s responsibility is to assemble all of the needed paperwork before construction — of individual houses or entire communities — can begin: blueprints, permits, foundation prints, energy reports, etc. She also assists her boss, the division manager, with anything he requires.

Overview: After finishing her internship in the spring of 2012, Caitlin moved back home to Houston, cognizant of her student debt and the high cost of living elsewhere. She took the summer off, then quickly applied and got a job at Music & Arts a division of Guitar Center that focuses on marching bands and orchestras, working on the sales floor. Early 2014 she was promoted to store manager. The next two years went well overall, though the transition to managing her former colleagues was a bit awkward. By 2016, however, Caitlin was looking to get out. She was tiring of the long hours and stress of retail, as well as the lack of potential for further career growth. Still working, she started applying widely for a new job, looking for “anything but retail”.

Caitlin had kept in touch with former employee, who had left to work for Toll Brothers. This woman noticed the opening for the administrative assistant job, assisting a manager, and recommended Kaitlin for it. Caitlin interviewed and was hired in September 2016. Sine then, her boss, whom she continues to assist, has been promoted, and her job has gradually come to specialize in housing starts, earning herself very good raises.

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You can see Caitlin’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “I like being a part of so many different teams. Each community has its own people, and I get to be a part of all of them. I love being part of the new community startups, as I get to see everything and where it’s going. It’s exciting.”

“Much of my day is hounding my field managers for missing pieces of paperwork. Hurry up and wait. During that downtime I might have to reteach myself a publishing program to revamp a booklet, or whatever Then I get the paperwork and I just go.”

At Berklee I worked in the Student Employment Office and really liked it. It gave me great job skills, which I use even today — filling out W9s and knowing what an exemption is — stuff no one teaches you. Dealing with international students helps me deal with foreign buyers today — it’s something we train people for at my company.

“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It doesn’t help. Right after college I worried a lot about what I was going to do. There are so many jobs out there, in and out of music, more than you’re leaning about at school. It’s scary but OK if you don’t believe that music will be your main source of income, and it’s OK if you don’t know what you want to do.–nobody does. Take your time to explore what’s out there, and fake it until you make it.

“I have a lot of fond memories from Berklee. I met lots of cool people, made great friends, and have lots of experiences that friends from high school never had. Take in as much as you can while you’re there. It’s not just music. It’s people, experiences, the city. Take advantage of it all!”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

Graduated in 2010 with a major in Performance. Principal instrument: guitar.

Position: Founder and Managing Director of the Berges Institute, a Spanish language school for adults who want to learn to speak Spanish, with branches in New York City and Chicago. Classes go for ten weeks, 90 minutes in class and a few hours of homework per week, and cost under $300. Students are taught to approach the language very logically and methodically. While Dan developed the materials and initially taught classes, he now focuses exclusively on the business end, where he does special projects and upgrades while his business partner focuses on the day-to-day operations.

Overview: From Madrid, Spain, Dan was allowed to work in the United States for one year after graduation. He taught music and gigged around Boston for a year, then moved to NYC where he did a 2-year Masters of Arts in Teaching Music from the Lehman School, part of the CUNY, finishing in the spring of 2013 While there, he made money as an independent Spanish tutor, and developed a lot of his own materials. Graduating, he senses that there was more demand for Spanish instruction than music instruction, and he would be able to stay in the United States on an investor visa if he started a Spanish language school that employed other people. He and his partner wrote up a business plan and, helped by a family loan, rented a space in midtown Manhattan. His visa was approved, and their first class started in August, 2013.

The first two years were stressful, and they were losing money. But they were constantly working to improve the business on all fronts. In 2015, everything turned around. Retention and referrals went up, and they were ranked higher by google. The business became profitable. Because so many of the practices were clearly laid out, in 2017 they opened a Chicago location. They currently have 24 employees, mostly instructors, but some administrative people.
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You can see Dan’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I probably enjoyed teaching the most, and did a lot of it when we started. I liked all the interaction with people. Since it’s language learning you talk to people a lot and learn a lot about them. Right now, I enjoy the logical thinking and creativity that all this business optimization requires, as well as the variety.”

“From the beginning we tried to run the business in a franchise-like way: every process is super-documented and everything that can be automated is. This way, our classes resemble each other and people know what they’re getting. Once we had it all built, the NYC school didn’t need us to watch it all the time, so we figured we could ‘copy-paste’ the plan to open up in Chicago.”

“I work on different projects with some touch point with the customer, some training or recruiting process. A project might last for a few weeks or for months. At the beginning producing our textbooks were a big project. Now I’m designing one-day workshops. I’m also designing our whole database management system–that one i huge!”

“We give a lot of very personalized training to our instructors. The most important characteristic for an instructor is how personable you can be. It’s of course important that they can teach the grammar and can explain it well.”

“As a performance major I’d have to practice many hours, which requires self-discipline. That self-discipline helps with how I approach projects today.”

“Try to be realistic regarding what the markets are. For example, the performance market just isn’t a very lucrative industry. Be honest and don’t try to rationalize certain decisions by making up how the industry is when that’s not real. Really understand it in terms of numbers and plan your career accordingly.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.