CMS/W Undergraduate Alumni Panel (lunch included!)

Open to all MIT community members. In-person preferred but Zoom option available.

Join CMS/W for an afternoon of networking and discussion about career pathways in writing and media studies.

Alyssa Smith (21E – CMS, ’17)

Alyssa majored in 21E with CMS & 6-3. She wrote the first-ever CMS/W undergraduate thesis and is currently finishing up a Ph.D. in network science at Northeastern, studying the networks people create on social media platforms. “I am grateful for the grounding in ~The Internet~ that my CMS background provided.”

Deborah Levinson (21W, ’91)

Debby is a user experience strategist and designer who helps nonprofit, corporate, and higher education clients (including MIT!) develop well-organized and intuitive websites and applications. A graduate of MIT’s 21W (Creative Writing) program, Debby is the co-author of three books: Build Your First Web App (Sterling, 2017), Visual Usability: Principles and Practices for Designing Digital Applications (Morgan Kaufmann, 2013), and The MIT Guide to Teaching Web Site Design (MIT Press, 2001).

Bruno Tambasco (CMS, ’15)

Bruno graduated from MIT with a CMS degree in 2015, focusing on film and video games to understand how media, storytelling, and interactivity shape perception and drive behavior. He now brings that interdisciplinary foundation, alongside his Management Science (Course 15) foundation, to his work in marketing, merchandising, and pricing consulting at Simon-Kucher. By applying principles from media theory and customer behavioral science, he helps organizations deliver the right value message to the right customer, at the right time, through the right channel to drive sales and create memorable experiences.

Laura Rosado (21W & 2A-6, ’22)

Laura majored in 21W & 2A-6 and also holds a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. She is a technical writer at MathWorks, where she blends engineering and communication skills to write product documentation. She also freelances as a sports journalist.

Holly Haney (CMS, ’18)

While at MIT, Holly focused on film studies, videography, and theater. Once leaving, she went on to join the world of commercial advertising, finding her way to commercial film production in Austin, Texas. Holly has worked in advertising, post-production, brand creative, and now, her favorite, on-set production. Her studies in CMS at MIT taught her the fundamentals of creating still and motion images, and her concentration in theater taught her what it is to be a part of a production team, all skills that she has continued to hone.

Derek Johnson (CMS & 15, ’15)

Derek graduated MIT with a CMS and Course 15 degree focusing on film and marketing, respectively. He has built a career melding creative and business disciplines, while specifically relying heavily on the analytical and creative fundamentals learned in CMS courses. Derek is currently the Manager of Current Series Operations at FX Networks where he focuses on supporting series in pre- through post-production and improving workflows across all FX departments.

Michelle Luo (16-ENG & CMS, ’24)

Michelle majored in aerospace engineering with a concentration in autonomous systems and comparative media studies while at MIT. Since graduation, she has been working with the MIT Morningside Academy for Design on social media and writing about design education as well as exploring research interests in history of science and technology and the role of media narratives in shaping imaginations of the future.

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The panel will be moderated by CMS/W’s director of undergraduate programs Professor Paloma Duong. Duong researches and teaches modern and contemporary Latin American culture. She works with social texts and emergent media cultures that speak to the exercise of cultural agencies and the formation of political subjectivity. Her most recent book is Portable Postsocialisms: Cuban Mediascapes after the End of History, a book-length study of Cuba’s changing mediascape and an inquiry on the postsocialist condition and its contexts.

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