As a Chicago native, Luis Perez ’17 grew up on the city’s North Side and spent his early years in East Rogers Park. “I was just three miles away from the Northwestern campus and had no idea I lived so close to a world-class institution,” he explains.
After graduating from high school, he attended college off and on for several years, working odd jobs in customer service while also keeping his passion for storytelling alive by working in non-fiction film and audio production. In 2015, Perez earned a BA in Arts Management from Columbia College Chicago.
“Even though most of my experience was in radio and film, I’d always been interested in (more…)
Tyler Green’s journey to MSLCE is unique. After suffering a traumatic brain injury a few years ago, he found himself longing to reclaim his identify as an artist. “At the time that the accident occurred, and after the accident, I eventually was needing my own joy and just my recovery. I was needing to get back into the arts because that was the community that I had been so heavily involved in prior to the accident,” he explains. After sustaining the injury, he felt like he was searching for 
“There’s a lot of voices that aren’t always heard, and I want to get those voices in the media. And you know, a lot of times I was that voice that wasn’t heard,” says Jonathan Mayo. For him, it comes back to education and community within the arts, and he’s on a mission to help build that into the artistic focus of all the organizations he works with.
“If you ask my mom, I’ve always been into fashion,” says Kaitlyn Fogg, “It’s a really big part of my self-identity.” Her interest in the field started from the tender age of four and by the time she was in middle school, she was already making her own Halloween costumes. “I started this thing where every year I’d make my own Halloween costume out of unconventional materials,” she elaborates, “I’ve always wanted to do something that was different. 
Khushi Goenka’s journey into the creative industries began with a production she got involved in while completing her engineering degree at Manipal Institute of Technology in India. From there she went on to work for Bosch but couldn’t shake the creative bug. During her time at Electron Combine, she asked to transfer from her technical position to the marketing department and learned that she enjoyed the work far more.
Creativity rarely happens in a silo, says 
Emily Altimari didn’t quite have the conventional start most creative industries professionals do. During her time as an undergraduate student at Colorado State University, she first studied zoology. Her love for animals motivated her to take up an animal care internship in a Chicago area zoo. It was during her time there that she realized that she was more interested in understanding people and working with them. “I always loved writing and when I was a child I would write small chapter books,” she explained, “so when I got back to Colorado State, I switched my major to Journalism with a double major in Spanish.” 
Jourdyhn Williams was