Stories

“Northeastern has helped me in a career sense,” says Isabelle Hahn, a 2020 graduate of the College of Arts, Media and Design. “I was also able to take courses at Northeastern that helped me with my creativity and my writing in a way that helps me now as a director…I have all this course work and background knowledge that has proven to be extremely helpful in what I’m wanting to do with my life now.”

Hahn, a resident of Los Angeles by way of Hawaii, credits her Northeastern co-op experience for being the launchpad that catapulted her towards her current career path—and creative aspirations. Despite pursuing a degree in journalism, Hahn entered the educational technology space after finding that “tech companies allowed [her] to use the same journalistic skills to interview people and create stories.”

Using what she learned during her co-op, Hahn developed into a coveted content creator for a variety of B2B tech companies on the West Coast, focusing on blogs, social, emails, and all other forms of marketing content. “After my first co-op, I stuck with it…it offered great opportunities like experimenting with different creative projects, and I don’t think I would have gotten the multimedia experience I have without it.”

Even with all her day-to-day success, Hahn’s creative garden truly begins to grow in her spare time—she moonlights as an independent filmmaker, putting an emphasis on music videos and short films. She ascribes her time at Northeastern with providing the foundational pieces to pursue a notoriously volatile career. “Musical theater was all I knew. At Northeastern, I took film acting classes and commercial classes, and that’s when the idea started to plant in my head.”

While she humbly states that she doesn’t have the largest filmography, it’s clear that Hahn has an eye for the screen and will take Hollywood by storm—as proven through her award-winning music video for “The Stack” by Jack Rabbit, selected as the winner of the Cannes Shorts Best Music Video award in 2023. “I think about Northeastern very fondly,” says Hahn with a smile. “I don’t think there’s any way I could have been better prepared for entering my career era.”

You can learn more about Hahn and see her entire body of work by visiting her website.