My interest in music and the intricacies of the music industry are what fueled my choice to change my major from Psychology to Communication while studying at Santa Clara University. While still taking communication courses I began getting involved with numerous extra curricular activities ranging from work with record labels, to managing a website that hosts nearly 40k unique visitors per month, to working with a production company in the production of events that host many hundreds of people. Work with this production company eventually led to my promotion to Director of the company (Leve1 Events), a position I have held since June 2012. I currently hold three resident DJ positions under the name ‘Esthetiq’ with my Record Label, Rage Face Records, as well as The Filth and Leve1 Events. I host a weekly event in the Santa Clara area at a bar called Blinky’s, and have performed live at numerous events in Chicago and the greater Bay Area. Work with these companies outside the realm of the Santa Clara curriculum has given me incredible hands on work in real world situations.
Playing Lacrosse, Football and Basketball in high school really taught me how valuable it is to manage one’s time efficiently. Though I came to Santa Clara University to play lacrosse originally, I reluctantly had to make a tough choice to follow my passion for my work instead. Being captain of both my high school Lacrosse and Football teams has given me incredible experience as a leader and has been a large part of the reason that I have been given the positions and responsibilities I have in many parts of my work experience.
I have been involved with several extra curricular activities in addition to athletics. I was the head of a Sudan Fundraising project in high school that raised over $1,000 for impoverished Sundanese people. I am currently a member of Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity at Santa Clara University. Both of these things have taught be about being apart of something bigger than myself, and the importance of working for a greater good.
In my Internship with Phuture Trax records I was the youngest person on the team by over 8 years. Heading up the street promotion team we were to spread word of events through many large Chicago neighborhoods, highlighting areas of certain demographics of higher interest. My office work included necessity of computer proficiency to upload the music and biographical information of the artists on the label to The Orchard, a large distribution firm.My work with The Filth required in depth knowledge of all social media platforms, as well as thorough knowledge of Word Press. Our job was to seek out and find artistic talent and showcase these artist on our website. Each month the site saw about 40 thousand unique views, and hosted 80 thousand downloads of our featured artists. The site was also a promotional platform used to promote events for production companies such as Blasthaus, Vital SC and Another Planet Entertainment. The Filth was relied on to create a promotional marketing campaign for Vital SC’s 2011 Wobbleland that sold out to over two thousand people (view the video here).
My work with Leve1 Events included street promotion, event organization, including contact with artists, transportation services and venues, while using connections that others did not posses to spread the word of our events to many groups on campus and the greater Santa Clara area. After years of working my hardest I was given the head position in the company when the then Director left the company. I was also responsible for using social media and other platforms such as independent websites I had created to promote opportunities and events. Our main event, ‘Don’t Bring Sand To The Beach’ is a highly regarded dance music event in Palo Alto that has sold out 4 years running while expanding each year as well (view the 2011 video, view the 2012 video, view a peak of the 2013 show, Photos from the 2013 show via Th3Clara).
In the summer of 2012 I also worked for TastemakerX, an iPhone application based on music discovery. I was initially a social media intern, but took on more marketing responsibility as the summer went on. My job was to work on hand with the CEO to better the application in any way. Because the application was in its early stages, much work was to be done answering user emails pointing out bugs, and then working with the engineers to fix those problems. I spend a great deal of my time updating the information on the site and the application, as well as adding new artists to the database.
