Author: Kevin

Graduated in 2016 with a major in Music Business. Principal instrument: cello.

Position: Creative Producer (project manager) at Meta (formerly Facebook). He works in the reality labs division (formerly Occulus) on all design-related things–both virtual reality and brand materials. William manages a team of designers, writing out the specs of what needs to be produced and making sure it’s delivered on time. William works from home, and much of his work is done in VR space.

Overview: While a Berklee student, William saw all that was happening with technology and wanted to get into it. He helped run a conference, “Hacking Arts”, in collaboration with M.I.T.. William’s work with this conference proved invaluable for his career. It led to a couple of internships in NYC after graduation. Then, when he was unemployed in 2017, William reconnected with someone he’d met at the conference, which resulted in him getting hired at Google as a production coordinator on Google’s events and experiences team, based in San Francisco. For a year and a half he’d be going from place to place, building stages, etc. But it was a lot of running around and didn’t feel sustainable. He searched for other oppotunities and was hired in to his current position.

You can see William’s LinkedIn profile here.

Choice Quotes:

“Every day is a new challenge, think creatively, be scrappy, the outcomes can be different. Through tech there’s a lot more possible, different solutions to different things. Working with design is very creative, too.”

“Don’t lose your confidence; continue to think big. We artists are gifted with our craft. You can bring that same thinking to your non-music career. Creative thinking and Berklee are often celebrated in industry!”

“There’s a few folks from an events background. Project management can be managing a band! Make sure you can hone in on what you want and where you want to work. You have to identify the applicable skill sets, then learn and grown what’s missing. I had to go from events to digital to media.”

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Graduated in 2016 with a major in Performance. Principal instrument: drums.

Position: Business Development Representative (sales) at Building Engines, a large company which handles maintenance contracts for commercial real estate. Working as a BDR, the entry-level sales position, Mario’s job involves reaching out to businesss and attempting to set up a meeting with one of the more senior sales people.

Overview: Mario started going to Berklee while in middle school as part of Berklee’s City Music Program. By the time he graduated, he was feeling burned out on music, and he went to work as a bartender, which definitely helped refine Mario’s people skills. He did this until the pandemic hit in 2020, then figured it was time to find a new career. Mario’s first job was at a thrift store, but it was very stressful work for low pay.

Through a connection, he was put in tough with Building Engines. He was hired as a research associate in their sales department, and did well, but around 8 months in Mario wanted to make more money. He spoke with people across the company and they all recommended he go into sales. Mario spoke with the sales managers and they were convinced he had the needed ambition and gave him a shot.
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You can see Mario’s LinkedIn profile here.

Choice Quotes: “I like the sales role becuase the money is good and I’m not being micromanaged. I also like change–the restaurant industry was feeling monotonous. Also, if I’m having a tough time that day, I’m encouraged to take a break. That freedom is liberating, I can get my work done when and how I want to get it done. I also love that I can go to anyone, not just my manager, and ask for advice and they’ll give it to me.”

“The #1 thing is Berklee taught me using my brain and mouth. Networking! Utilizing who I met and when I met them helped me a lot. I got to meet a lot of people. Having those experiences I got to communicate in ways I wasn’t used to.”

“Noone’s going to do it for you other than yourself. I wish I’d learned sooner to never take a break, never stop. Power through and be your own advocate. Noone’s going to help you. The more independent you are as a musician and businessperson, the better off you’ll be.”

“This year I joined a wedding band. My musical inspiration is coming back. I always wanted to gig and play. The goal is to still gig and tour and make music where I can. Music is still with me and whether it’s playing the same cheesy 20 songs at weddings, at least I’m still playing and I enjoy that.”

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Graduated in 2016 with a major in Music Production & Engineering. Principal instrument: guitar.

Position: Software Quality Assurance (“QA”) Engineer at EBay, the large platform for online auctions and other purchases. His job involves testing the software on the front end (what the user sees). He’s on a team of 14, with three other QA engineers, ten software developers, and one product manager. Ming’s job mostly involves writing testing automation code in Javascript in order to test new features. He also sometimes goes through debugging the software with a developer.

Overview: After graduation, Ming moved to L.A. with the goal of being an audio engineer for a music label. Four months later, he was hired! First he was a runner, but in two years he had worked his way up to assistant engineer and then engineer! However, Ming started to suspect that this wasn’t the career he wanted after all. Hours were long and undependable, and he seldom saw the sun. He considered pursuing other careers, but wasn’t sure he could affored more education. Then in 2020 the pandemic hit and he was laid off. While the pandemic was terrible for many in the industry, for Ming it was a great stroke of luck! Unemployment insurance and pandemic aid added up to more than he had been earning at the studio. Ming took advantage of this opportunity to learn a new career, though he negotiated part-time employment at that studio while he was in school.

Ming took Computer Science courses at a community college and earned an associate’s degree in computer science, then in early 2022 he did a four-month program with “Codesmith“, a coding “boot camp” which had good career preparation. Ming applied to many, many jobs as he was finishing. One month after it finished, a friend who works at EBay recommended Ming and he was hired into his current position.
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You can see Ming’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “It’s the problem-solving factor of QA. The process of something being broken, finding out what’s wrong, bashing your head against the table to figure out the bug, but then you do and you see it fixed–it’s very satisfying. That said, being a web developer is still my career goal.”

“Quality Assurance is very important. Our website going down for even five minutes could mean millions of dollars lost!”

“Those first 2 years, even 5, out of college, try to say yes to a lot of things. It may not be sustainable but that way you can get a lot of experiences and figure out what you like. Once you have figured out what you like, double down on the skill sets you need to succeed in that field.”

“Referrals really help when looking for a job. They mean skpping having to talk to recruiters. Talking to the engineers directly lets you showcase what you can do even if you don’t have experience.”

“One thing that bummed me out while working in music was I couldn’t afford my own music equipment. I’ve bought more in the last 6 months than during my whole time then.”

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Graduated in 2016 with a major in Electronic Production & Design. Principal instrument: piano.

Position: Global Product Readiness Launch Manager (project manager) at Microsoft. In this remote position, Zack manages X-box new product launches. He manages onboarding of products, making sure a customer can go to microsoft.com , buy the stuff, see the relevant videos, etc. without a hitch. He regularly works with 2 other managers; site ops & web production teams, which build up materials and upload info; a category team which manages actual product coming in from manufacturer; a design department, and a product marketing group. He manages teams but is nobody’s boss. “It’s really an operations position, making sure the workflow is smooth.”

Overview: Zack liked both music and technology. He was nervous that he lacked the personality to be a professional piano player, and was equally nervous that he woudn’t be a good fit for working in a studio. After a year, he did audio editing for television and worked in an Apple store fixing computers. In 2019, after two years at the Apple store, Zack was feeling unsure about his long-term prospects, so he sent out a bunch of resumes. He landed a cool music-related job at a company that sold custom audio systems for voice mail — the person who hired him was also a Berklee grad. Then 2020 came around, the pandemic hit, and Zack was laid off.

Zack started applying to many jobs, including tech jobs. An internal recruiter from Microsoft reached out to him and he was hired into his position in the fall of 2020.
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You can see Zack’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “These products are a household name/company and worldwide–it’s cool to see the scope of these launches. I don’t game myself, so the job is less about the gaming than the impact.”

“If you want to work as a project manager, you have to detail oriented in an alpha, I’m in charge, way. If you could plan a trip for a dozen people, booking everything and making sure everyone did what they had to do, you could be a project manager.”

“The skills I learned at Berklee were people skills and the ability to talk to just about anyone just about anywhere. I may not be so lucky to have those if I hadn’t gone to Berklee. Also the technology component of the EPD degree and all the classes and knowledge from that made the day-to-day tech component easy-peasy. You’re using tech to its fullest!”

“Coming out of college I thought I’d have it more together than I did–job set up, etc. It may not work that way, but keep forging down the path. Searching for what you don’t know, taking in information. The path will illuminate.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

“If you want to become a lawyer, it’s never too late. Every law class has a diverse age of students. There were parents, folks in their 40s looking for a new career. I’ll say this up front, though. A lot of people see lawyers on TV and think they all make a lot of money. 20 years ago that was probably the case, but now the market is saturated. More attorneys, more law students. A good salary is attainable but not guaranteed. To get a big law firm job you need to be in the top 10% of your class. Know that you probably won’t make what you think as you start out. And law school is very expensive–comparable to Berklee each year. Do a cost-benefit analysis. What do attorneys make in the market you want to practice in. Will that justify the debt you’ll take on?”

“If you don’t include a trial, a case is around 100 – 110 hours of work. If it goes to trial, you want to put in 4 days of straight prep and 3 days for the trial.

“In the first year of law school you really figure out if you want to do law or not. There’s a lot of dropouts. It’s challenging, but also very rewarding at the same time.”

“Don’t think going to music school makes you unmarketable. I think Berklee is why I got into Belmont despite a mediocre LSAT score. Berklee is a unique school. Use that to yoru advantage.

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

Graduated in 2014 from the Boston Conservatory with a degree in Musical Theater.

Position: Anthony works as an event planner at a large hedge fund. He plans and organizes half a dozen very large internal corporate events each year, each one attended by over 1,000 people. Anthony also has a side job where he writes screenplays.

Overview: After graduation Anthony moved to NYC. He had a photography busiess which was doing well, but was a side thing. Anthony worked various side jobs, then got an equity acting position as part of the cast of the Little Shop of Horrors musical which was touring, but found that he didn’t enjoy performing, as there was no room for creativity. Returning to NYC, Anthony was working various temp jobs. A friend recommended him for a corporate concierge position at this hedge fund, promising Anthony he’d never be bored, and Anthony took the position in late 2016.

While he thought the position would be temporty, Anthony really liked the job. By the end of 2017, he was part of the CEO’s Orchestration team, helping set up meeting spaces, offices, etc. When the pandemic hit that work was drying up, so Anthony transitioned to HR and worked on the team that handled the company’s COVID testing program. As that eased off in early 2022, Anthony got his dream position on being the fund’s event planner.

Choice Quotes: “For myself, musical theater is fabulous and I love it–but what was the joy? For me it was storytelling and creative problem solving. That’s what I enjoy the most. Instead of donig it literally I took it to the concept of storytelling. What am I doing to refine that concept as a storyteller. If you can release yourself from the literal your world will open up in ways you may never have imagined! Find the creativity (or whatever you want) in different opportunities.”

“BoCo will prepare you well for planning because you’ll be dealing with so many personalities to navigate and collaborate with. What I loved about BoCo is that you’ve had to deal with so many big personalties (students, faculty, others) and learned to thrive and hold your own in that space.”

Give yourself grace, be gentle with yourself, and know you’re safe. If yo’ure not feeling safe, do what you need to ground yourself in reality. Careers take time. They ebb and flow and change like water. Don’t pressure yourself to have a large amount of money or a certain position by a young age. All of that will come.”

“If you can be the calm one in the room, you will get ahead.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee/BoCo alumni.

Graduated in 2020 with a major in Electronic Production & Design. Principal instrument: guitar.

Position: (Internal) Recruiter at Publicis Health Media, which is part of a large marketing / public relations company with tens of thousands of employees. Jaeman finds platform administrators, social media marketers,, data analysts, etc on LinkedIn, and offers them job opportunities at his company. He also communicates with candidates, screens them, and guides them through the interview and job offer process.

Overview: Jaeman transferred to Berklee after studying media and communications for two years. While at Berklee he organized Berklee’s first K-Pop Summit, but the pandemic pushed it back to the year after he graduated but was still excellent experience. After graduating, Jaeman moved home to Philadelphia, and spent several frustrating months unemployed. A friend from church suggested he apply for a recruiter position at a different, smaller company.

Jaemon got that job, which was initially half-time but became full-time later on. After a year and a half, Jaeman started actively looking for better opportunities. A recruiter reached out to him about his current position, which he started in June, 2022.
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You can see Jaeman’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “I like working directly with people. One great thing is I sometime match people who got laid off or are unhappy at their jobs and get to connect them with new opportunities. My employer, Publicis Group, is known to provide great benefits and have a great work culture.”

The music career is a long-term fight. For other stuff, coursera courses will help. Learning Excel will help a lot–know that and you can land many jobs that you’d want. “After graduating you’ll go through hard time. Everyone thinks they’ll be the one who won’t struggle. Everyone I graduated with is struggling, I’m probably the only one making decent $. But don’t stress. Time is long.”

“Working as a recruiter is a good starting point. You just need to have a good personality and customer service skills. Getting your fit into any business field is really crucial. You don’t need a degree for this job, bu tat the same time there’s a lower ceiling than other business jobs. You’re getting decent $ for sure, then can use the time after 5 pm to pursue something else.

“It was scary to move to my current job–I didn’t have a business degree and I’d worked at a smaller company. I wondered if other legit recruiters would look down on my experience. But after moving I realized my new job wasn’t all that different.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

Graduated in 2020 with a major in Professional Music. Principal instrument: voice.

Position: Associate Go-To-Market Manager at T-Mobile, a multinational cell phone company. A type of project manager, Aria works remotely, handling over 100 proposed sales of different types of phones, plans, etc., sending them on for approval, then informing all locations of what the new prices will be and for how long.

Overview: While at Berklee, Aria promoted caf shows as part of her student employment. Graduating during the pandemic, she moved home to Washington state and looked for jobs. Her first job was with a small marketing firm, but the pay was low and she didn’t like it and soon left. She then took a 5-month contract job managing a large fundraising event for a local Indian-American community organization.

After that event had ended, Aaria started hearing from many recruiters about project manager positions. Soon she was hired into her current job, initially as a contractor, but after a year she became a full-time employee. Since the job was remote, Aaria moved from the Seattle area to Detriot, where the cost of living is lower.
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You can see Aria’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “I always wanted to get into marketing of some sort. I enjoyed enjoyed adminstative tasks. I do know how to do it and enjoy it.”

“Berklee has 8+ classes per semester and that helped me stay organized and on top of things, which is really important when you look at how many things can come in in my job.”

“Music isn’t something I want to give up on. My day job is a means to an end. In the future, I hope to create an album.”

Don’t freak out. Things are scary. It will take time to find a job and your first job won’t be what you want it to be. It’s a resume builder. Contract jobs are a great way to get your foot in the door. No matter how short the contract, it may be extended or they may hire you full-time.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

Graduated in 2016 with a major in Music Business. Principal instrument: piano.

Position: Data and Reporting Analyst at Healthstream, Inc., a large, Nashville-based tech firm that develops and sells many different pieces of medical-related software. Bradley reports regarding software licensure and usage for their clients. On a team of six, Bradley handles 7 huge accounts, each of which spends over $10,000,000 per year on software!) His job is broken into super-huge accounts (health groups with dozens of hospitals) that get full-time attention. He compiles data, analyzes it, and puts it into reports for the sales team and others. In the near future he’ll present to clients, walking them through reports. Between those reports, he handles ad hoc requests as they come in. Currently he’s also working on automating many processes, updating old scripts, etc., so he codes daily.

Overview: In his last year at Berklee, Bradley was working at an Apple store. After graduation, many of his friends were moving to Nashville, so he transferred to an Apple store in Nashville. He gigged and met people, then a year later an Apple store customer who worked at UMG put in the word and got Bradley a position there doing data entry. Bradley worked there for four year, gigging on the side, but at some point the job felt stagnant without the likelihood of promotion. In 2020, he used YouTube and Udemi/Courseacademy to learn SEQL and did a bit of side work on this. In early 2021 he left the UMG job voluntarily, living off savings plus gig income, and started to actively look for other opportunities, applying to 5 – 10 positions each day.

It took over 1,000 applications, but finally one application worked! Bradly was hired into his current positionin the spring of 2022.
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You can see Bradley’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I enjoy the investigative part of data analytics, finding answers to questions, being able to speak a special langage and translating it for those who don’t speak it. It’s like being a translator, folks looking for me to tell a coherent story.”

“Berklee does a good job giving you the tools to be confident enough to know your musical strengths and get up and go do it. That can-do mentaltity translates to many other areas.”

“In today’s job market, most companies (outside of things like law, where you need a degree) are looking for what you can do rather than what school you went to. There are endless resources for you to learn new careers.”

“Our company is packed into the back end of their software usage. We see each time a license is activated, so we track how often a license is used. We partner with the sales team, that then uses the info to see what other needs we may be able to fill. This also includes when software isn’t being used.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.

Left Berklee in 2013 (officially finished in 2015) with a major in Music Therapy. Principal instrument: voice.

Position: Customer Success Team Lead at Wonolo, “The Uber of Temporary Staffing”. Wonolo’s platform vets workers and connnects them to places of employment who need temporary workers. Daphne is in touch with the businesses, making sure everything is going smoothly and resolving any issues. As a team lead, she also supervises and onboards other customer success employees.


Overview: For the first couple of years after leaving Berklee, Daphne was doing music therapy jobs but feeling unfulfilled. She then spent a year working at Trader Joes while figuring out what she wanted to do. She moved from her home in Florida to Nashville in 2017, hoping to start her own music therapy practice but took a job at Lyft doing customer success to pay the bills. After a brief interruption she ended up working for Lyft in operations; the music therapy business didn’t really take off, but she was content.

In early 2019, Daphne noticed that Wonolo was in the same shared office as Lyft and the people at Wonolo seemed really engaged and happy. She knocked on their door and introduced herself. The timing was good, as they were looking to hire their first customer success person! Taking that job made Daphne their most senior customer success person, which positioned her for a promotion to team lead as they grew. Shortly after this interview she was promoted to Customer Success Manager.
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You can see Daphne’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I love just being a resourse to my team. I love building relationships wth my team, how I can quickly identify problems and come up with solutions. I love the company culture, and that it’s remote–I can travel and still work. It’s diverse and inclusive. I’m excited to come to work each day.”

“As a music therapist, leaning how to build relationships and rapport with pepole made me great at customer relations. We look for those soft skills in hiring new CSMs. Also, working with patients the goal is to assess and come up with a plan to meet those goals. We’d find pain points and figure out a treatment plan–in my role as a people manager again I’m responsible for making sure peopl eare donig their jobs, but also that they’re able to do those. I have one on ones, some of hwich is like a therapy session. Plus at the company I’ve been able to lead actual music therapy session for colleagues, lead a guided meditation session–it makes me strong at what I do.”

“Shut out the external noise and really see what you want to do and what will make you happy. Be in the moment and honest with yourself. If I’d been more honest I could’ve avoided a lot of ups and downs. You only have one life. Don’t get discouraged when you feel lost–everyone feels that way sometimes. Be OK with changing. We all change.”

“In my role I’m a people manager, subject expert, project manager, and onboard new employees.”

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See the full index of successful Berklee alumni.