Proud Teacher Moment

This is why I love what I do in the world of academia:

[Re: Screenshot 1]

Below is an email from a former student who took my Music Industry Entrepreneurship and Innovation class at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in 2019. She was an international student from China who, before taking my class, was unsure how her interests in math and music could turn into a career in the music industry.

When she enrolled in my winter 2019 class, she was pursuing a Bachelors degree in Applied Mathematics and had never worked in the music industry, nor was she a musician. We spent many office hours sessions talking about possible post-grad paths based on her academic background and interests.

Through my curriculum she learned about the intersection of music, data, and technology and wanted to explore the field further. As I had done with many other students, I helped her get her first internship in the music industry. She landed a data analytics internship at an in-vehicle music streaming startup-—a startup that I had been mentoring through the Capitol Music Group / Capitol360 gBeta MusicTech accelerator program.

The internship with the startup would set the tone for her academic and career journey post-grad.

A few months after taking my class, I wrote one of her letters of recommendation to support her candidacy to attend the UCLA Anderson School of Management. She was accepted and later graduated with a Master of Science degree in Business Analytics.

Today, she is a Data Scientist at TikTok and graciously claims that “All of this couldn’t have happened without your help.”

Clearly, she’s being way too kind.

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The second message is from another former international student of mine from Australia. He also excelled in my UCLA class. I helped him get his first music industry internship at Repost by SoundCloud, a former music rights client of mine.

Like the student mentioned above, I spent many office hours with him discussing his career goals, which were to build and launch his own startup. I even advised him on the idea itself. After graduating, he went on to build upon his idea with his co-founders and eventually launched the startup in real-life.

Today, he has been named a Music Network’s 30 under 30 finalist and his startup has gone on to raise money and be accepted into two different startup business accelerators.

He graciously praised that, “Your class really enabled me to start to think with ambition and to imagine how technology could positively make an impact on the music industry and I wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to be in your class. It was a pivotal part of my life that led me to where I am today and helped me shape my ‘why’ as a human. This whole journey started there.”

Clearly, he’s being way too kind.

——–

I have no words to express how proud I am to see my students go off into the world and do great things with the encouragement and motivation that they received—that I bestowed—while spending 11 awesome weeks with Professor Dae. =)

Cheers to my former students and to the next cohort (2023) of Music Industry Entrepreneurship students!