Meet Adrianne Ohnemus, BHS’20! A doctor of physical therapy, Adrianne utilized her Northeastern experience to its full potential—from her engaging co-op experience to curating her skills in Bouvé’s simulation lab. We’ll discuss her co-op experience, Bouvé’s innovative approach to teaching, and her favorite charity, In My Running Shoes.

Give to Adrianne’s Boston Marathon Fundraiser for In My Running Shoes: https://www.givengain.com/project/adrianne-raising-funds-for-in-my-running-shoes-86039

Meet Bill Brown, CJ’93! Currently working as a history teacher and special education case manager at Timberlane Regional High School in Plaistow, New Hampshire, Brown has a long history with working with at-risk youths in Massachusetts and making a difference in their lives. We’ll discuss his interest in Northeastern’s criminal justice program, his experience working with programs like the DMH and DCF, and transitioning into a career in education.

By Brianna Mitchell

“If I could have told myself in high school that I was going to work for the mayor of Boston, who is the first female mayor of Boston [and]….a mom whose kids go to the same school as mine…I don’t think I would have believed you. I try to remember that, and it does put a lot of things in perspective because I feel very lucky that I have the job that I have,” says Ellen Quinn ‘SSH’13, MPA’18, who serves as director of state relations for the city of Boston aside Mayor Michelle Wu. 

As a high school student in Quincy, Massachusetts, Quinn participated in local political campaigns. When it was time to apply for colleges, she had her sights on Northeastern. Aside from the campus being close to her family, the university’s co-op program and the resources the College of Social Science and Humanities offered to its students—including having former governor Michael Dukakis as a professor—prompted Quinn to apply early decision, knowing she could fully explore her interest in politics. 

Majoring in political science, Quinn quickly built her resume by taking advantage of numerous influential experiences. After completing her first co-op working at the Massachusetts State House for State Senator Michael Morrissey, she packed her bags to live in London for 12 weeks as a part of the Hansard Society Scholars program. She split her time between taking courses at the London School of Economics and interning at the United Kingdom’s Parliament, where she got assigned to Shabana Mahmood, one of the first three Muslim women elected to serve as Members of Parliament. “It was fun because, at least [in the United States], with politicians, their staffs are like 15 or 20 people. But [Mahmood] had one staffer and then me.” This meant getting to frequently interact with Mahmood while learning the administrative operations of a government office and conducting research to support the MP’s efforts of opposing budget cuts and communicating with her district at a town hall in Birmingham.  

After her experience across the pond, Quinn did not settle in Boston for too long. For her second co-op, she worked in the Chief of Staff office in The White House during President Barack Obama’s first term. Some memorable moments include giving official White House tours to visitors, attending the official welcoming ceremony for then-UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and connecting with White House senior staff. This experience helped Quinn narrow down her post-graduate career aspirations as she learned that she preferred state politics over serving in a federal institution. In her experience, “national politics didn’t feel quite as tangential…I couldn’t really feel the impact [we] were making…I liked state and local [politics] because you were a bit closer to the work you were doing.” 

With this understanding, Quinn believed working at the Massachusetts State House would be the ideal landing spot after she graduated stating that she “basically sent [her] cover letter to every single legislator [she] could think of.” Among those recipients was Speaker Robert DeLeo—whose son also happened to be Quinn’s teaching assistant in one of her American Studies courses. “In my cover letter, I was like ‘Oh, I loved my time at Northeastern. If you can do anything for a fellow Husky, that would be great,’” she recalls. That one line caught the attention of Speaker DeLeo, a proud Northeastern alumnus and University Fellow for Public Life, that he called Quinn inviting her to interview—and later be hired—for an open position. 

Quinn would spend the next nine years working in the Office of House Speaker Robert DeLeo, serving as special events coordinator and director of operations. During that time, she would plan various ceremonies in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and staff Speaker DeLeo for events across the Commonwealth. Simultaneously, Quinn obtained her master’s degree in public administration through Northeastern’s part-time program. Looking back at that time, Quinn explains, “[It] was a really great experience. I met a lot of people from across Massachusetts, and I love doing that and learning more about the state…I feel lucky that I got there, especially through a Northeastern connection.”    

When Speaker DeLeo stepped down at the end of 2020, Quinn had to figure out her next move. Acting on an interest in working for the City of Boston she developed in her urban studies courses at Northeastern, Quinn became involved with the Boston mayoral election to replace Mayor Marty Walsh. Admiring Michelle Wu’s work as a city councilor, Quinn volunteered for Wu’s campaign. She can remember her excitement when mayor Michelle Wu was elected and credits a few statehouse connections for helping her land an interview for the new administration, for which she was hired as the director of state relations. Approaching her fourth anniversary in this position, Quinn recalls some significant wins. From securing the city of Boston a seat on the MBTA board to stopping a loud Department of Transportation noise that was disturbing a school in West Roxbury, she shares that her ability to enact real change for Bostonians every day in her role is fulfilling and keeps her optimistic when facing challenges in her field. 

As Quinn expresses her gratitude for her current role, it is clear that her determination was the ultimate catalyst in achieving her professional goals throughout her career. Her advice to students interested in getting involved in politics? Quinn says, “Be willing to try anything because there are so many different aspects of the job. You could be more interested in campaigning, you could be working at a legislative [or] do executive…[Being] open and willing to try everything and do all the groundwork is important.” The next generation of policy changemakers at Northeastern should take comfort in knowing that just two short miles from Huntington Avenue, they have a fellow Husky serving as a strong role model in Boston City Hall. 

Tracy Fink, MBA’90 is a business coach, teacher and speaker who is passionate about showing people how to treat themselves as they would their best friend or client. She is the founder of The Tortoise Institute where she consults with companies and organizations to build awareness and leadership practices to boost individual and team effectiveness. 

Tracy holds an MBA from Northeastern University and a BA in Psychology from Boston University. She completed a year-long Teacher Certification Program at Search Inside Yourself, the global evidence-based emotional intelligence program engineered at Google. She is a mentor/advisor for the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship (WISE) at Northeastern University.

Tracy enjoys collaborative cooking, adventurous travel, walking in nature, and college football. She is co-host of the podcast “Our Dead Mothers”.  She and her husband live outside of Boston, MA.

Growing up in Bahrain, Fatema Janahi, E’22, MS’22, was always interested in environmental sustainability. Inspired by dialogues on reforming economies to be less dependent on the gas and oil industry, Janahi believed she would pursue environmental science in higher education—therefore it was a surprise when she joined her after-school robotics program. Despite not being enrolled in her high school’s sole computer science class, Janahi recalls being drawn in by the Lego Mindstorm sets available to students in the lab. “It was more [of a] curiosity to begin with [as] you did not need to have [coding] knowledge,” explains Janahi. This accessibility for beginners led Janahi to attend her first local recycling-themed competition—where she qualified for an international round—and witnessed how her new hobby intersected with her primary passion. 

This would not be the last time that Janahi’s curiosity and ambition would cause her to stray from an expected path. Despite not having any family who had studied abroad before, she chose to pursue her higher education over 6,000 miles away from home at Northeastern, without ever visiting Boston. She first heard about Northeastern when some representatives from the university visited her high school. After seeing photos of the Boston campus, she believed it resembled the colleges she saw in popular films growing up and instinctively knew Northeastern would be the ideal school for her.   

During her first semester at Northeastern, Janahi realized she did not see herself pursuing a career in a lab environment, so she switched her major from environmental science to environmental engineering. While completing her core engineering requirements, she was enrolled in a class that included a robotics project. “I really liked the creativity that came with engineering…and I actually had to learn coding properly [which] was fun. I liked to see what I was doing move around.” Reconnecting with an abandoned area of interest caused her to make her final degree change by majoring in computer engineering. Additionally, she took advantage of a BS/MS program—today called PlusOne Program—that incorporated a master’s degree in engineering management, satisfying a collaborative aspect that was missing in her higher-level computer engineering courses.    

From living in a shared space for the first time in Hastings Hall to navigating a new city, Janahi admits that she dealt with culture shock. To mitigate this, it was vital for her to find a sense of community on campus. She joined Northeastern’s Arab Student Association, which she later became president of, and the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship, colloquially known as WISE. In WISE, she spent one semester in the WeBuild cohort. “I had an idea for a digital agency because I love marketing, and I wanted to build a platform for small businesses. Instead of people trying to find them on Instagram, I built a directory where businesses could sign up and…list their business” in a centralized place.         

After she graduated from Northeastern, Janahi had to hit pause on her venture to focus on her first post-graduate role at Google. However, recently, she rebranded it under a new name, Palm, with her Bahrain-based business partner. Today, Janahi explains that Palm is an “e-commerce website” where designers in the Middle East and North African region can sell fashion apparel with an emphasis on community building “to empower people to work together.” The benefits of having these businesses collaborate are that they “get exposure from each other’s audiences,” and consumers can buy unique clothing pieces. Janahi’s innovative venture that gives back to her community back home earned her recognition for a 2024 Women Who Empower Innovator Award.    

With two Northeastern degrees and a business certificate via the Galante Engineering Business Program, Janahi began a new chapter in New York City as a technical program manager with Google’s cybersecurity team. She believes that her two co-op experiences, one as an embedded software engineer at Emphysys—a company that develops technology for the medical, life science, and industrial equipment industries—and another as a software engineer at Motorola, enabled her to empathize and communicate with her team of engineers. “Having been a software engineer, I understand how [engineers] see things and I can relate to what [they] go through. A lot of project management is change  management [and seeing] what works for your team.”    

Janahi plans to continue her role with Google and invest in Palm for the foreseeable future. She shares that she has enjoyed her unique experiences with the tech giant. From visiting the famed Google headquarters to traveling around the world, Fatema has come a long way from the young curious student in Bahrain. As to how she juggles her jam-packed schedule? Fatema can draw on the lessons she learned from a mentor she connected with through WISE. She reflects that Tracy Fink, a proponent of mindfulness and fellow Northeastern alumna, came into her life at the right time. “She would help center me when I needed it [as well as getting] me into really good habits like journaling and just taking a breath,” says Fatema. Equipped with all these foundational tools from Northeastern, Janahi is set to continue being a trailblazer in any industry she touches.     

By Brianna Mitchell

You may have seen their viral blush star in countless TikTok makeup tutorials, heard about their recent celebrity-studded benefit to raise money for mental health resources, or know the beauty brand’s founder, actress and singer Selena Gomez. As a social media and content assistant manager, Louise Dechelle, AMD’18, understands the gravity of working at Rare. “The messaging behind the brand…being able to express your individuality and valuing mental health…it’s super empowering to be a part of that revolution and the next generation of beauty lovers because we’re not just posing and being pretty. It’s really about playing with makeup, making it your own, and loving the way you are. Love your rare, as our latest campaign says.” 

Growing up in France, Dechelle chose to specialize in language and literature for her international baccalaureate degree, where she studied English, Spanish, and Italian. When she learned about Northeastern at a college fair in Paris, the university’s global emphasis and co-op program immediately appealed to her. “[The co-op program] was super important to me because I know that’s how you build relations.”   

Entering Northeastern with dreams of working for National Geographic, Dechelle believed that majoring in journalism would best position her to obtain a co-op at the coveted company. After realizing that many of her journalism courses centered around American sports and politics—which she wasn’t too familiar with—Dechelle praises her advisors for accommodating her evolving interests by allowing her to design her degree. “I knew what kind of companies I wanted to work with, but I didn’t know how to get there. [My advisors] made it easy for me to create my degree…I was able to mix video with communications and digital art—and this whole social media world was still developing…I changed [my major] three times, but I was able to tick the boxes and still finish in five years.”  

Despite all the changes to her undergraduate degree, Dechelle remained in the College of Arts, Media and Design. The small class sizes allowed her to take artistic risks with her classmates and have valuable one-on-one time with her professors. She gives kudos to a handful of influential professors—including David Thames, Mira Cantor, Jamal Thorne, and John Kane—for encouraging her to trust her creative abilities and their expertise being constant sources of inspiration for Dechelle. 

Moreover, in one of her CAMD classes, Northeastern professor Michelle Carr organized a trip to Toth+Co, an advertising agency in Boston’s South End neighborhood. Dechelle, who recalls being impressed by the agency’s presentation, was ecstatic when her professor informed her that the connections she met at the office admired her inquisitiveness and offered her a co-op position. Looking back at that time, Dechelle says the energy of that environment was perfect for her first co-op experience. She vividly remembers her and the creative team exchanging their most outside-of-the-box ideas with Toth+Co’s CEO in anticipation of pitching to renowned companies like Lululemon or Coca-Cola. When she returned to Northeastern after this exciting experience, she had a newfound clarity to invest her creativity in a social media advertising career. 

For her second co-op, Dechelle lived out her dream of working at National Geographic Learning, where she focused on “assets for English second language speakers” while building “digital interfaces for apps” and proofreading content from a collaboration with Ted Talk. Reflecting on her co-op experiences, Dechelle believes that gaining perspective from a startup and a Fortune 500 company equipped her with a strong foundation in her post-graduate career journey, which began with a digital production freelancing position at National Geographic.   

Further, Dechelle embraced the chance to study abroad in New Zealand, a program she envisioned taking part in when a representative from Northeastern told her about the university’s global opportunities years prior. Taking courses on art conservation, she is grateful for an eye-opening field trip to an Indigenous town where she witnessed how one community preserves their culture in their everyday lives through their meal preparations and dances. Aside from that, exploring the country’s natural beauty was one of her highlights. “I think that’s why I moved to California. I could experience New Zealand again with the national parks,” Dechelle adds with a laugh. 

Her career at Rare is the other reason she planted her roots in California. As a member of the company’s marketing team, Dechelle aims to generate excitement for product reveals with posts on their social channels. Apart from massive launches that require the entire team’s participation, Dechelle shares that her manager “empowers” each team member by delegating different makeup items to them. When this occurs Dechelle’s tasks include “brainstorming the content for the product on all of our social channels, capturing the content, helping the community [in real life] events, gathering all the assets, briefing the creators for [user-generated content] campaigns…[and] just scouring social, finding ideas.” In her day-to-day life, she curates weekly newsletters for her team, a task she carried over from her time at an influencer marketing company, that features a rundown of new products, trends on social media, and an analysis of the creator market. 

Another aspect Dechelle loves about her team at Rare is how it resembles her favorite aspect of her time at CAMD. Being in a “women-fueled environment,” reminds her of the intimate “classes where you can share ideas” with your peers and grow from their feedback. Much like the brand’s mission, Dechelle adds that they are all aligned under the company-wide goal of creating content that “reflects the values that are inclusive [and] authentic.”    

As she continues to grow in her role, Dechelle hopes to be a leader who motivates others to find inspiration on social media while leading imaginative brainstorms with her co-workers. For now, Dechelle teases that 2025 already looks like an exciting year for Rare. As the lovers of the beauty company impatiently count down the hours until the new year, they can bet that with the creative insights from Dechelle, the social promotion for Rare will be flawless. 

Meet Jae Williams, EdD’22! Williams, who has a doctorate in education from Northeastern and currently serves as executive in residence for the Business of Creative Enterprises program at Emerson College, has ambitions to take an innovative approach to teaching and making education inclusive for all. Learn more about his award-winning doctoral thesis, teaching success stories, and inspirational podcast Dr. Jae’s Office Hours that highlights the intersection of business, creativity, and social justice. 

Meet George Blitch, SSH’01! George captures Northeastern’s entrepreneurial spirit—between starting his own publishing company to document Indigenous Elders, his own cartography company, and his own podcast, George has done it all. Learn more about how George’s Northeastern experience inspired him to forge his own paths in life.

View the Transcript here

Meet Howie Newman, S’73! After making his musical debut in 1973 at Northeastern, Howie spent the majority of his career as a professional baseball writer before transitioning to full-time musician. These days, you can find Howie touring around the country and playing his light-hearted at community centers, libraries, and for adults with developmental disabilities.

Northeastern Alumna Antonia Sousa showcases the content creation skills she developed during her co-ops and College of Arts, Media and Design courses at NBCUniversal. 

By Brianna Mitchell

“Working in late night has been really exciting because I’m editing clips that go on social that very same day…it’s the most rewarding thing because you’re instantly seeing how that’s performing,” says Antonia Sousa, AMD’23. One of her favorite projects she recently worked on was editing “Kevin Hart and Seth Meyers Go Day Drinking,” an installment of a popular interview series on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” which amassed over a million views on YouTube.    

Whether you are looking at metrics or the occasional re-post by Kevin Hart, there is no doubt that Sousa’s talent resonates with the talk show’s audience. Sousa, a native of Peru, is currently participating in NBCUniversal’s Page Program, a competitive application-based cohort of young professionals who receive exposure to different areas of the media conglomerate. After completing her first two rotations of corporate communications with Telemundo and collaborating with the social media team on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” she is currently embarking on her final assignment with the video team on “The Today Show.” Additionally, she will assist the “Saturday Night Live” social media team by cutting and captioning videos. 

On the outside, Sousa’s academic and career trajectory may seem kismet. Especially since Sousa’s father attended Northeastern and credits NBC programs like “Saturday Night Live” and “Seinfeld” for teaching him English. However, Sousa admits that her journey to 30 Rock was riddled with uncertainty.   

After spending two years at a specialized art school in the Savannah, Georgia, Sousa transferred to Northeastern, believing she could thrive in an environment that would narrow down her academic direction. In her two years at Northeastern, Sousa acted on that belief by majoring in journalism and getting involved on campus. With intent to “contribute to something apart from [her classes]” she joined the Huntington News, Avenue Magazine, and became a CAMD Ambassador.  

Sousa credits these experiences with more than just professional development—they laid the foundation for personal growth. For example, navigating challenges like losing a re-election bid for a social media position at Huntington News made a profound impact on her. She notes that dealing with rejection taught her “to not let it sway me in the wrong direction” and to approach “opportunities with an open mind [while] never feeling entitled to anything.”    

Sousa took those lessons to heart and carried that perspective with her to two influential work opportunities—a co-op at Wayfair and an internship with Universal Music Group. Sousa recalls on her first day at Universal Music Group, the company switched her from the marketing team to the audience development department. Despite her initial hesitation to take on a data-driven role, Sousa reports that “I ended up loving it and seeing a completely different side to social and creative spaces…[this] is also why I am enjoying the Page Program as much as I am because it is such an unexpected environment that you need to be able to adjust to new things.”   

Looking back at those two experiences, she adds that it “gave me the confidence I needed” and provided “clarity in terms of what I wanted out of a work environment.” Although her second internship is where her initial interest in the entertainment business began, she prefers the hands-on role she experienced during her creative production and video marketing co-op at Wayfair.  

“Media is a really exciting medium to be in,” reflects Sousa. As much as she is interested in continuing her career in television, she adds that she is open to other sectors. “It’s more so about the work that you do and the impact you are leaving as opposed to the industry that you are in,” she says.

When she’s not staffing live-studio audiences and giving public tours of NBC studios, Sousa is focused on growing her professional network and applying her journalistic skills from Northeastern at “The Today Show.” Looking ahead, Sousa can join the Page Program’s graduate period, an optional term where the program supports participants’ journey to securing an internal or external full-time role. Whether she chooses to take advantage of that option, there is no doubt that Sousa’s expertise will shine bright in any future role she takes on.