Author: Kevin

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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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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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.

Graduated from Berklee Online in 2020 with a major in Professional Studies. Principal instrument: Guitar.

Position: Quality Analyst: Trust & Safety at TikTok, the popular short-form video app. James has three responsibilities that each take up roughly equal time: looking the the work of content moderators to ensure they’re doing their jobs correctly, analyzing data, and reporting his findings.

Overview: James came to “brick-and-mortar” Berklee in 2009, but he left after two years, eager to get out and tour. He had some rough years, but by 2014 he has living in Nashville and playing base and touring with a guy who was doing extremely experimental music. By 2018 this was winding down. James had to take a job in a restaurant to make ends meet, meanwhile, that experience had made him lose interest in more conventional music gigs. James decided he needed a decent day job, and that meant completing his degree.

James was able to stay in Nashville and complete his degree on Berklee Online while he made money filing papers in a law office. He finished his Berklee Online degree just as the pandemic hit and started looking for jobs. Pretty quickly James was hired by Tiktok in a contract position as a content moderator, but his high quality work and diligence led to a conversion to salaried employee and a promotion into his current position within six months.
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You can see James’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: ” I really love Tiktok! I love the people I work with and what I do. As to the work itself, it’s never exactly the same thing twice. There’s room for play, thinking, and trying to figure out why things are happening the way they are. That makes my job a refreshing experience every day.”

“When I was first at Berklee, I avoided non-music classes. But you really want to be a full person–folks who go for more traditional degrees get to do that more. I couldn’t do my job today if it weren’t for the Berklee Online math class.”

“Seek outsized responsibilities for your role. What’s been exciting for me at Tiktok is the same as what excited me while touring. Back then I’d never toured before, played a somewhat unfamiliar instrument in a brand new genre. Responsibility is an opportunity to learn and grow. Don’t just frame yourself as able to do what you’re already doing. People or companies, if they buy in that you’re capable, will give you opportunities to do more. I’ve gotten the greatest return on my investment at those jobs where I had to stretch myself.”

“After I got the job at TikTok they required a photo of my diploma. I was like, ‘Wow, thanks to Berklee Online I finally have this’! In general, music is a language and in many ways your brain starts to work in terms of communicating with other people, what makes people tick/what are their internal systems/talents? In my wife’s school, computer programming is part of the language dept. Music should be too.”

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Graduated in 2019 with a major in Music Business. Principal instrument: voice.

Position: Digital Content Coordinator (since promoted to Digital Marketing Manager) at Golden Technologies., a large family business that makes powered wheelchairs and other items to assist mobility for the physically disabled and well as reclining furniture. Alyssa creates digital advertising content, works with the marketing team to develop strategies to build brand awareness, and meets with retailers to discuss ways to help them grow their business.

Overview: Alyssa grew up aware of the family business, but she wasn’t interested and her parents didn’t pressure her. While at Berklee she discovered the Music Business program and really enjoyed it. Alyssa decided to go straight to graduate school to study business; she applied in got into a Masters in Communications program at Drexler University. In her first year she worked at a paid internship at Universal and did classes at night, then the pandemic hit and the internship was indefinitely paused. She moved back home and started to work at the family business as a marketing assistant — the business was considered essential so remained open.

Initially Alyssa planed to return to Universal, but she found she really enjoyed the business, and with her growing responsibilities at this job an internship somewhere else felt like a step backward in her career. She opted to stay with Golden Technologies. At the end of 2020 she received her Masters Degree, and six months later she was promoted to Digital Content Coordinator.
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You can see Alyssa’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “I’ve always been business-driven. I always liked marketing the best. I enjoy creating content, getting to know my audience–in part because I’m a performer. I love that I’m helping people–I see every day how our products truly help improve people’s quality of life. I’m one small part of that.”

“Every skill I learned at Berklee has been totally tranferable to my professional and personal career. Companies want to hire musicians! Before my job at Golden I interviewed and companies were so interested in my music caerer. They like creators.”

“Things have a funny way of working themselves out. I found something that was giving me purpose.”

“Keep learning. Marketing is CONSTANTLY changing! One week later there can be a new thing trending. Subscribe to marketing newsfeeds to stay on top of it. But at the same time your job isn’t your identity. Keep up with your passions, and if you’re meant to be at a different place, go with that feeling.”

“That first year after Berklee I was burned out on music and focused on school. Then Covid hit and I started to practice more. I never gigged much while at Berklee, though I sang a bit. Now I’m gigging more than ever and getting paid for it on top of my day job!”
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Graduated in 2014 from the Boston Conservatory, with a major in Musical Theater, with a focus on acting/directing.

Position: Technical Recruiter at Google. Connor works directly for Google, helping find promising software engineers and network engineers to work for the Google Global Network–their online cloud platform. Connor is given promising candidates and his job is to guide these people through the interview and hiring process. While Connor is in New York, many of the teams he hires people for are based on the West Coast.

Overview: During his last year at BoCo Connor realized that he liked acting and directing, but did not really envision himself being a professional musical theater performer. He moved to Chicago in search of alternative opportunities, worked a variety of side jobs, and started his own theater company which did well for about a year, then fell apart. The woman he’d cofounded the theater company with was temping at a recruiting firm. He got a temp job at this firm as their office manager/receptionist, did well brought on by the recruiting agency to be their full-time office manager–his first real job.

Because nobody else in this small office was doing it, Connor took care of their marketing, and ran their DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) program. It felt good, but it was a lot, and he chose to focus on his day job and do less theater. Then the pandemic hit and there wasn’t really an office to manage. Sensing that he would soon be laid off, Connor convinced them that he would make a good recruiter. He was given that position, and worked there for nearly a year. He moved to New York in 2021 to be with friends, and a recruiter reached out to Connor to work for Google.
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You can see Connor’s LinkedIn profile here.

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Choice Quotes: “I love being a recruiter! It is so fun! It’s emotional, which can be good or bad. At my old agency I got this woman a job at a big law firm as an entry-level admin role. I really walked her through the whole process. When she got the job she cried to me–saying she was the first person at her company to get that caliber job–she’d been working at Target and serving coffee. Now she had this huge opportunity. It’s those moments that make me so happy!”

“Inherently, performers are well-suited for this job. We really learned at BoCo how to work on the fly and be flexible and open. Accepting the situation at the moment and knowing how to manage things. You’re always learning lines, doing shows, have lots of text in your head. I still reply on that now–in recruiting you have awkward conversations such as when someone doesn’t get the title/pay hoped for or gets rejected and is upset. being able to memorize lines and go through talking points–having those in my head while making it not sound like I’m reading a script.”

“If you are an artist and want to get into a corporate environment but are not sure how, be an office manager. It’s the best way to learn the lingo, get involved with things, take advantage of opportunities to do projects, get a sense of what you want to do.”

I had many ups and downs, especially downs, in theater. I thought I’d never recover. Looking back, I wouldn’t have changed anything. Even the awful moments–I learned and grew so much! Let things happen, learn and grow, apply what you know in your next situation.

My roommate is a BoCo grad. He’s been working restaurants his whole life. When he started hering my corporate speak last year he was so thrown off by it–like I’d really changed. 1 year later, tomorrow he has an interview with an office admin role at an insurance company. He saw how easy it is for us performers to “fake it until we make it”. It’s a good lesson: you may think you’re not qualified–my roommate is all nervous that he doesn’t know stuff, but I’m like “You’re going to learn it.” If you’re feeling stuck, give it a shot.
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See the full index of successful Berklee/BoCo alumni.