Berklee Alumni Enjoy Strategic Advantage in Los Angeles

One of the main ways Berklee alumni in Los Angeles connect with each other and find opportunities is through the Berklee Center in LA, which hosts upward of 20 events a year.

December 10, 2014

When Tina Morris walked into the platinum- and gold-record-lined office at Village Studios in 2006, shortly after moving from Boston to Los Angeles, she was just expecting to chat with a Berklee friend who worked there. What she got instead is a testament to the power of the Berklee name in LA, and the strength of its alumni network.

The studio’s owner, Jeff Greenberg, spotted her and asked where she went to school. “I said, ‘Berklee,’ and he goes, ‘Okay, go right upstairs. I’ll meet you there.’ I was hired that day,” Morris says. She wasn’t even there to apply for a job.

Greenberg had good reason to grab a Berklee alumna when one walked in. A number of Berklee alumni already worked for him, and he knew what an asset they were.

“He’s fallen in love with the caliber of people that come out of Berklee,” says Morris ‘97, who’s now the studio manager at Village Studios, which has recorded albums from everyone from the Rolling Stones to Lady Gaga. In fact, she says, about 90 percent of the 30 employees at the studio are Berklee alumni.

Explore Berklee's alumni community in LA in this video:

Who you know is everything in the LA music business, and that’s good news for Berklee alumni, who are remarkably well connected to each other and willing to help fellow alumni seize opportunities in what can be an impenetrable scene for newcomers with few contacts.

“The people who are successful out here are the people who know how to keep their network healthy and really utilize that network. The thing about Berklee is that you already have that built in,” says Jessica Rae Huber ‘12, scoring manager for Sparks and Shadows studio, which scores The Walking Dead, Outlander, and other high-profile shows.

One of the main ways Berklee alumni connect with each other and find opportunities is through the Berklee Center in LA, which hosts upward of 20 events a year, ranging from small, intimate meetings with high-level alumni to a large annual brunch for the whole community. It also keeps track of jobs in the LA music community and helps connect employers and alumni.

“The Berklee Center in LA is able to stay on top of the rapidly changing music industry by really staying in touch with our alumni. They are the eyes and ears of the industry,” says Justine Taormino ‘06, the center’s assistant director.

“In general, in the music industry, opportunities are not necessarily posted online...so most of our alums are finding their opportunities and jobs through each other,” she says.

In addition to the sizeable networking advantage Berklee alumni have in LA, there’s also this: the Berklee name itself carries more and more weight in the town.

In 2013, the Hollywood Reporter named Berklee the top music school in the industry, beating out local powerhouses like UCLA and USC. The following year, Berklee remained in the top two.

“Being in the film industry, I found that it had a very big impact,” says Steve Dzialowski ‘07, who, with film composer Lucas Vidal (Fast & Furious 6, The Raven), owns Music and Motion Productions in the Venice section of LA. “People look up to [the Hollywood Reporter], so at the same time they actually look up to Berklee, in a way that they never did before.”

“The Berklee name means something when you mention it out here,” Huber says. “Even people who didn’t go to Berklee, they understand where you’re coming from or at least they understand you have a baseline level of skill and knowledge when you say you’re from Berklee.”

Indeed, what Morris found when she walked into Village Studios in 2006 is truer today than ever: in a city where name recognition and who you know is everything, it’s good to be a Berklee alumna.