She may have decided to pursue biology and pre-medicine at the University of Michigan, but Sophia Logas ’23 has long loved the music industry as well.
When the pandemic hit during her sophomore year, the program became more of struggle in a remote learning environment. Logas began to wonder: If she wasn’t accepted to medical school, what else could she see herself doing? After talking to her guidance counselor and academic advisor about her passion for music, she decided to declare communication and media as a second major.
Putting all her focus on earning her undergraduate degree, she also made it a priority to gain real experience in the music industry. As a junior, Logas served as a marketing intern who worked on content projects, on brand partnerships, and with Grammy-nominated songwriters for Girls Who Listen.
She then moved to Degy Entertainment, where she was a virtual event intern who helped transition live events to immersive virtual events in the midst of COVID-19 using a platform where clients could host online conventions, corporate meetings, live concerts, and symposiums.
As a senior, she landed a PR internship at JV Agency, where she got to conceptualize with artists on their album and single rollouts.
Once her whirlwind of undergraduate experiences was complete, Logas decided to take a gap year—in part because she hadn’t taken the MCAT yet, but also to explore other career options.
During this downtime, she realized she wanted to learn more about the music industry. “I started looking at grad schools, and I loved that Northwestern offered the MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises program,” she explains. “Because it isn’t specifically about the music industry, I knew I could do so many things with it.”
She applied to a few other graduate programs as well, but when it was time to decide, she found her best fit at Northwestern. Knowing she could tailor the classes to match her goals and stretch her skills beyond the world of music was a big benefit.
“I love the program so far. Everyone in my cohort brings something unique to the program, so we get to learn from our peers as well as our professors,” Logas describes. She also enjoys getting to work on group projects and seeing how people come together—something she says her undergraduate program lacked. In Assistant Professor TJ Billard’s Brand Management in the Digital Age course, for example, she worked closely with a team to conduct and present a brand audit for a small business.
She says each class exposes her to a new industry perspective, whether it involves marketing, economics, or ethics—and often involves hands-on work, too. “In Associate Professor Jacob Smith’s Understanding the Creative Industries class, we focused on a project about transmedia and how to turn one specific intellectual property into a whole universe across different platforms. That was so much fun. Every day, I have a better understanding of what it means to be in the creative industries.”
Logas says she still plans to apply to med school but will work in the music industry until that day comes. If a career in medicine doesn’t work out—or even if it does—then she’ll continue down the creative path and follow her dreams of becoming a VP of publicity at a record label or working for a streaming platform to manage artist and label partnerships.
“Even though my background involves two very different things, music and the creative industries are like universal languages that can heal. This program helps me take the creative side and understand, realistically and analytically, how you can make it happen. To me, it’s not that different from medicine,” she describes. “Either path will allow me to help people.”
Read more on our blog and follow Northwestern’s MS in Leadership for Creative Enterprises program on Facebook and Twitter.