Alumni

I have been working at a digital media company since graduating from Colby in 2020. After interning at 70 Faces Media, which is a Jewish media company with brands spanning from Jewish parenting to global news, I began as a part-time assistant, eventually earning a promotion to editorial assistant for Kveller, a Jewish parenting publication. I wrote articles, managed social media, found images and loaded articles on the site. I now work in the events brand of the company, The Hub, bringing online events to families, as well as older adults all over the world.

Helping to build the virtual communities of Kveller and The Hub together during the pandemic has been extremely meaningful to me. Connecting virtually has become so important, and as media has evolved, it has been inspiring to watch this company grow and thrive in these trying times.

Honing my writing, communication and critical thinking skills at Colby has served me well in my career so far. Writing, editing, and connecting with others are invaluable skills. For me, working closely with my advisor on my English Honors Thesis and peer-tutoring in the Farnham Writer’s Center helped to sharpen these skills. Moving forward, I am considering applying these skills to other paths, including brand strategy, non-profit communications, and teaching.

Some advice I have for current students: Utilize the Colby alumni network. I know, it can be intimidating, but people are often very eager to help other people, especially those with a school or other interest in common. Sometimes a simple email or LinkedIn message can either connect you to a job (along with your skills, of course), or give you the first-hand perspective you want about a field you have been interested in. I wouldn’t be where I am without these types of interactions. I’m happy to be a resource in any way I can.

After I graduated from Colby in 2017, I moved to Boston and started law school at Northeastern University School of Law that fall! I graduated in May of 2020, took the bar, and started initially practicing in Boston with Greater Boston Legal Services doing COVID Eviction Defense for low-income tenants. At the end of my contract with GBLS, I started my current role as an Associate Attorney with Shaheen & Gordon, P.A. in Concord, NH doing Criminal Defense. My job is different every day, sometimes doing extensive research and writing, sometimes negotiating with prosecutors or opposing counsel, and sometimes arguing in court. I love how dynamic it is.

Being an English major helped immensely. In fact, the essay I wrote when I applied to law school was about how closely I aligned poetry and the law – how both used structure, form, specific language, interpretation, nuance, and argumentation to create persuasive narratives about something important. This remains a closely held belief. Being an English major at Colby helped inform close reading, strong analytical skills, and effective writing. It also sharpened my creative thinking, willingness to innovate within something confined, and ability to view issues through multiple critical lenses.

My post-grad life perspective is narrow because I went to grad school straight away, but if you are a current student interested in the law, I would advise a few things. Interrogate what’s exciting to you about the law and hold on to that, but be open to the possibility of changing your opinions, ideas about the world, and goals for yourself. You’re not married to what you set out to do. Also, keep reading fiction and keep reading poetry. It will bolster both your writing and your capacity for joy.

After graduating from Colby, I moved to Los Angeles in June 2018 to begin my two year commitment with Teach For America. For six weeks that summer, I took intensive courses in classroom management, socio-emotional learning and data driven instruction. Following that summer, I taught for special education for two years at a public and historically underfunded elementary school in South Central Los Angeles. Currently, I am a resource specialist at a high school in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. My job entails direct instruction to students with IEPs and various learning needs, collaborating with general education teachers, and serving as a specialist for any student with diverse learning needs. In May of this year, I graduated from Loyola Marymount University and received my M.Ed in Urban Education concentrating in policy and administration. I am in a program this fall to clear my teaching credential in California, essentially providing my certification to teach anywhere in the US. 

While I pursued my human development major more directly following Colby, being an English major deepened my ability to analyze and successfully problem solve– two skills I use daily. Especially since the on-set of digital instruction and virtual learning, the critical thinking skills I acquired throughout my English studies at Colby prove irreplaceable and essential to my success as an educator. The tremendous support and high quality instruction I received from professors like Aaron Hanlon and Laurie Osborne refined and strengthened my ability to produce successful and convincing pieces of writing. With regards to my Master’s degree, these skills lead to a strong and comprehensive thesis. Remembering the skills they imparted on me, I studied and clearly articulated issues facing the neighborhood I taught in and delivered meaningful ideas for creating systemic change for students I served. As I continue my educational pursuits– aspiring to have my doctoral degree before my 30th birthday, I will push forward with a critical and questioning mindset of growth, intellectual curiosity and immense gratefulness for my Colby education.

After graduating from Colby in 2017, I decided to work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) doing research within the domain of healthcare delivery science. The Center for Healthcare Delivery Science at BIDMC examines innovative ways to improve existing systems within a healthcare network to improve both patient experience, provider experience, and the efficacy and value of patient care. As such, it gave me a great view of how all aspects of a hospital coalesce to deliver patient-centered care. After my time at the Center, I matriculated to Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in the summer of 2019.

I believe that my English major has afforded me a great foundation for medicine, and an invaluable skillset that I will take with me into each patient interaction. On a basic level, nearly all career paths rely on the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, which is especially true in medicine. Majoring in English certainly helps you sharpen these fundamental skills and build upon them. On a deeper level, however, I have found that my English major has taught me the power of personal narratives and the importance of looking at issues through a variety of lenses. My professors at Colby trained me to maintain a critical eye and helped foster an inquisitive and creative mind. I believe this foundation has helped me become an effective listener to patients and consider a breadth of differential diagnoses that could contribute to how a patient presents to clinic. Just like in analyzing a text, a physical exam finding in medicine means little without considering context. This perspective will remain a cornerstone as I take care of patients in my future practice as a clinician.

I work at NPR as a production assistant for the TED Radio Hour. My responsibilities range from editing, scoring, and mixing audio segments for the podcast, writing scripts for the host, pitching episode ideas, and conducting research on guests to prepare for interviews.

An interesting facet of my work is that I get to learn about a wide variety of subject areas with each new episode we produce — things like the science of love, the psychology of climate change, navigating loneliness, jumpstarting creativity, and so on. I often feel like I’m still in school, immersing myself in a new topic every few weeks, and it keeps my job feeling fresh and engaging.

My advice to any current Colby English majors who are unsure of their future career path is this: the skills you are developing in your English classes can and will translate into many different career paths. Stay open-minded and curious, because you never know when you will unexpectedly stumble upon an industry where your skills are incredibly unique and valued.

Majoring in English at Colby was empowering and transformative. My professors in the English department were incredibly supportive and nurturing, and they taught me to always ask questions, think outside of the box, follow my curiosity, and know the value of my own ideas and creativity. Becoming an English major was one of the best decisions I could have made in college, and I’m so grateful I did!

I’m a Brand/UX writer at the startup Nift, where I work on anything from emails, press releases, website and app copy, to user experience research and testing, to personalized care for our partner businesses.

Writing in my career is a lot more about doing research and testing to learn what to write, rather than just writing itself.

A ‘fun’ interesting facet of my job is that because my company partners with local businesses, I’ve gotten to explore tons of Boston small businesses for work on my quest to find the best smoothie around.

I’m really appreciative of the English department for two reasons. First and foremost, I feel like it gave me the command of and creativity with words to jump into copywriting without being traditionally trained for that. I also wouldn’t be where I am if my professors hadn’t encouraged fun with words, and creative exploration for where and how to express my ideas.

“My English major from Colby helped train me to think analytically, to go deeper than what’s on the surface, and question assumptions. I also honed my writing skills there, specifically around making a persuasive, cogent, and concise argument.” -Allyson Downey

Allyson is an entrepreneur, MBA, writer, and parent who has built a career on the power of trusted advice. In 2013, she launched weeSpring, a Techstars-backed startup that helps new and expecting parents collect advice from their friends about what they need for their baby. As a first-time parent herself, she saw how overwhelming, intimidating, and expensive it is to prepare for a new baby, and she set out to solve the problem. weeSpring has received accolades from TechCrunch, Mashable, CNBC, and the Daily Mail, and it was heralded as “Yelp for baby products” by InStyle magazine.

She is also the author of Here’s the Plan: Your Practical, Tactical Guide to Advancing Your Career During Pregnancy and Parenthood (Seal Press, 2016). She’s written for publications like Time, Fast Company, and the Wall Street Journal and has been a featured speaker at the Central Bank of Hungary, the Experiential Marketing Summit, the Brand Innovators Summit, NYU Stern, Columbia Business School, and more. She has appeared on ABC World News Now, Power Pitch on CNBC, and other outlets.

I’m a Senior Account Executive at Genuine Interactive, a Boston-based advertising agency. I’m also a freelance writer. Previously, I was an Account Executive at BBDO Worldwide in New York City.

I work in a very creative environment, surrounded by copywriters and visual designers. While I work on the client services/business development side, the skills I honed during English courses at Colby, like critical thinking and clear writing, have helped me in my career immensely. The ability to write a terse, understandable, and actionable email is a lost art in the professional world.

I am an associate professor of English at Sacred Heart University, co-director of the University’s Writing Across the Curriculum/Professions program, and incoming chair of the Department of Language and Literature.

After graduating Colby in 2001, with a double major in English and Spanish, I pursued a PHD in American literature at Fordham University.  Completing my doctorate in 2010, I went on to earn a position at Sacred Heart and received tenure this past year.  The stellar liberal arts education from Colby enabled me to thrive in a graduate program and then to succeed in academia.

I had exceptional mentors at Colby (Cedric Bryant, David Suchoff, and others) who empowered me in countless ways.  My mission as a professor has been to pass on this spirit of collegiality and professionalism to peers and students.  From Jewish Literature to African American narratives, my courses at Colby inspired in me a true passion for language, storytelling, and the humanities.  I am forever grateful.

I’m currently juggling a few positions including the Marketing & Events Manager at Jackson Hole Ski & Snowboard Club, Day-of Wedding Assistant for Lovely Day Events & Chalk Artist for custom event chalkboard designs. The path that got me here is many years as a Detailing Assistant at Exquisite Events in Newport, RI during my summers in high school and college. That, coupled with my connections in the D1 Ski Racing Community landed me an Development & Event Coordinator position at Vail Ski & Snowboard Club out of college prior to my existing role.

I get the opportunity to work with tons of local businesses, soliciting sponsorships for legacy events here in Jackson, WY.

I use my English Degree every single day in the Event Planning industry. I’m constantly creating pitches to prospecting event sponsors or writing heartfelt letters thanking donors and participants of our local community events. I can thank my Colby English professors for setting me up for success: I now have the ability to communicate to my community and to captivate an audience for a cause.

I edit, write for, and manage the website for NEJM Catalyst, a sister publication to The New England Journal of Medicine that showcases efforts to improve health care delivery. I’m also NEJM Catalyst’s social media manager and e-newsletter writer. I found the job thanks to a fellow Colby English major alumna, but my background in content marketing, and before that in development editing for academic publishing (primarily history and science), landed me the job. I also attended the Columbia Publishing Course after graduating from Colby, which helped me navigate the start of my publishing career.

I did consider trade (i.e., book) publishing when at Columbia, but one of the perks of academic and medical publishing is the eight-hour workday. In the evenings, I go home and dabble in fiction writing. I haven’t published anything yet, but I recently joined an amazing writing group that is pushing me to do more.

I’ve known I wanted to work in publishing since high school, so being an English major made perfect sense. My early career, editing history textbooks, combined both my English and History major backgrounds. I never thought I’d go from there to health care—or end up immersed in social media for work, for that matter—but I took the chance in 2015 and haven’t looked back since.

The NEJM Catalyst team calls me “Eagle Eye” and “Grammar Goddess.” I wouldn’t have those nicknames (or that eye) if it weren’t for the beginnings of my editing career at Colby—rigorous paper writing and rewriting! Shout outs to The Colby Echo and the Farnham Writers’ Center, too. I read everything I laid out for the newspaper, and tutors learn a lot.

I’m currently working as a Customer Experience Associate for Bonobos, the men’s clothing company, in New York (my manager, Mike Langley ’12, was also an English major). It’s a great position from which to observe and identify all of the different parts of one of the most disruptive and successful companies around. While it’s cliche for a liberal arts/Humanities graduate to say, I spend 90% of my day writing.

The day-to-day consists of writing e-mails or talking on the phone to/with happy, frustrated, or curious customers. The job requires me to know the “Why?” of every service our company provides and, furthermore, “Who” is responsible for rendering these services. No, I am not analyzing the subtler parts of my managers’ e-mails, but I do employ what I learned in the English Department when I have to present facts, arguments, or trends in our customers’ interactions with us. The English major may be primarily focused on learning how to effectively communicate thoughts, but it has the ancillary function of teaching its students to navigate the logic of others (in my case, co-workers and customers). Being a part of a whole is just as significant the whole itself, something the English major drives home and teaches without really even trying.

Likely, I will be returning more intimately to literature as a discipline (whether that be through teaching or attending graduate school), which makes me think I made the right choice in declaring English as one of my Colby majors. The major was so valuable to me, especially today, as it taught me how to navigate truths, seeing as truth is now, suddenly, the most fluid thing around us. It’s hard for me to point to something and see it as true in 2018, but I can at least pull evidence to form an argument for that same thing as being truthful. Don’t worry about the job you can or cannot get with an English degree, but rather focus on your time in class and (when appropriate) try to boil down what you learn and see where it applies. You would be surprised at how much you have learned that doesn’t directly relate to Garret Deasey’s delusion in Ulysses or Iago’s deception in Othello.

I work as a science writer at the Yale School of Medicine.  After I graduated, I worked at a newspaper, lost that job, became a freelancer, and then took this job at Yale! I get to talk to a lot of doctors every day, learn in-depth about their work and medical conditions. Most of the stuff I learned for this job, I learned on the job.

I am getting my masters in poetry right now and my poetry professors at Colby were extremely helpful and encouraging to get me on that path.

My name is Sarah Neal and I graduated in 2018 as a French and English double major with a concentration in Creative Writing. I’m currently an intern on the Federal Affairs team of the New England Council, a non-partisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public/private organizations. I am working in their D.C. office, where the team focuses on both directly lobbying members of the New England delegation on behalf of our members, as well as facilitating lobbying by putting on events where members can speak to their delegates themselves.

On an average day, I spend most of my time researching and writing, which is why I believe my English major prepared me perfectly for this line of work. Each week I write briefs on legislation and federal policy covering topics on technology, finance, and education, all sectors that I entered my internship having little experience in. However, I quickly found that graduating with an English degree gave me the tools to conduct thorough research on legislative issues and clearly synthesize my findings. I am in the process of looking for a job to start once my internship concludes at the end of the year, and am pursuing public policy opportunities on Capitol Hill as well as at a few corporations in the D.C. area.

My one piece of advice to my fellow English majors is to never feel as though the skills you’ve picked up in English classes are not applicable beyond the literary world. I was always worried that if I didn’t want to pursue publishing then I would never find a job, but ultimately I think most industries are looking for good writers. I’ve found that adept communication skills truly leave you with a wealth of opportunity.

After graduating from Colby in 2017, I was hired as a copywriter for a company called LogoMix. We specialize in building websites, creating merchandise and generating buzz for small business owners all over the world. On a day-to-day basis, I speak with some of these entrepreneurs in order to understand their company and do their website justice.

As an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing, I feel my education at Colby prepared me for this role tremendously well. At Colby, I learned how to utilize my creativity in order to produce unique, substantial work. Websites are incredibly important to the success of a business, so making sure I’m writing and publishing original, creative content that is written in the client’s voice is of the utmost importance. The professors at Colby helped me build on my creative thinking and develop writing skills and techniques that would translate well into the professional world.

Whether you’re a current or prospective English major, the best bit of advice I can offer you is to think about what excites you as a writer. We all want to end up in a career that not only brings home the bacon, but is something you love to do everyday. By pinpointing the specific elements of the English major that fancy you the most, you’ll be able to take classes that will prepare you well for the road ahead!

I work within the Food & Nutrition practice at FleishmanHillard, which is a public relations agency. My main clients are Quaker and PepsiCo North America Nutrition. I’ve always been passionate about brand story telling and joined the Fleishman team when they were starting to expand this new practice given my passion and experience within the food industry, having worked on previous clients such as Barilla, Butterball and Jimmy John’s at Edelman.

I love helping brands tell their stories and particularly how the field of nutrition has so many complexities and potential stories and story tellers.

Colby helped me think critically and strategically while also understanding how to tell a compelling story. All of these skills I’ve been able to take with me into my career as a public relations professional (or what I like to call, the profession of telling brand’s stories).