By: Kelly Wells

Last night I said that it would be hard to top our first day of meetings in L.A., but today did not disappoint! We started by breaking off in pairs to do on-site networking with alumni, so I went with Izzy Falkovich to visit Rachel Geller. Rachel was a PR major who graduated in 2015 and now works at Showtime as the coordinator for events and award shows.

Talking to Rachel was really great because while she was a public relations major and utilizes the skills she learned in school, she’s not doing traditional PR. She said that as awful as it is to say, she’s never pitched a day in her life. Instead, she spends most of her time coordinating entries for awards like the Golden Globes, the Emmys and the SAG awards, and planning For Your Consideration events for award voters. One thing that Hofstra doesn’t really teach their PR students is event planning – it’s covered in passing as something we might have to do, but it’s never been presented to me as a viable career path – so hearing from Rachel, someone who does events for a living, was exciting.

Rachel also talked about her move to L.A. and how when her job was relocated, she only had three weeks to pack up her apartment in Astoria and move across the country. She said that it turned out perfectly, though. She loves Los Angeles and the life she’s built for herself out here, so as difficult as the move may have been it was all worth it for her.

After our on-site networking, we headed to Netflix where we met with Glenn Nano, the product manager, and Mandy Beckner, the manager of indie films. While they spent a lot of time discussing how films are chosen and produced for Netflix, I was really interested in Glenn’s job. He strategizes how the online Netflix interface is personalized for each individual account and how everything down to the movie poster can be different from person to person. Netflix’s ability to adapt for each individual user is what has helped make it so successful, so hearing from the people who make that happen was very interesting.

Our last meeting of the day was at Warner Brothers Animation, where Jay Bastian, the SVP of series, walked us through the process of creating an animated series. It was interesting to see the evolution of DC Super Girls from a line of toys to a very unique series, and while I don’t watch much animated television, I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for that when it comes out this year.

We ended our day with dinner at Hard Rock Café to celebrate Professor Gershon’s “birthday.” All of our meetings so far have been incredible, and I’m excited to have some free time to explore the city this weekend!