Adam grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, but he moved to California because he loved film and movie production and wanted to work in the industry. “I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I moved to LA because I wanted to do something with movies,” he said.
California is a land of opportunity, and he found success working with costumes in Hollywood. “I love to work with background actors, styling them as they progress from shot to shot, scene to scene, documenting everything and making sure they look the way they’re supposed to,” he said. “That’s the career path I fell into, and I did that for several years.”
But the actors and writers strikes of 2023 slowed production down, and jobs became hard to find. Worse, a knee injury put Adam on disability and made him re-evaluate his future. “I needed a career change,” he said. “And that meant I needed new skills.”
He took a career aptitude test “because I wanted a career that’s going to play to my strengths, something I’m going to want to do for the long term, and project management aligned with me really well.”
Project management “opens doors” he said. “You can work in a lot of industries.” It involves connecting with people “and making sure they stay connected and cohesive and that they have the information and resources they need.” At its best, project management “is helping people so that they can do what they need to do. Service is at the core of it, and that appeals to me.”
“I started looking at project management programs, and just came across Calbright College. It was the only no-cost program I came across, and it let me set my own schedule and make the progress I wanted. So I went for it.”
Enrolling was easy, and once he was in classes, “Calbright exceeded my expectations. I think I was expecting it to be just an online platform. But I had connections to success counselors and I had actual instructors I could reach out to, and I had access to courses in Google and Coursera and other places, I could access it all just by being at Calbright. I also attended a lot of workshops they offered on topics such as job search skills, perfecting your resume, leveraging LinkedIn, and how to make a strategic career change. All very practical things that could help me with my goals. I came to Calbright because it was free and I found it was really impressive.”
The hardest part, he said, was keeping himself motivated when life happened.
“I went to my brother’s wedding back on the East Coast, so I didn’t get a lot done that week,” he remembered. “There was a week I was sick. There was a week I scratched my cornea and couldn’t look at a screen. Random things happened to slow me down, and I realized once you kind of get off your schedule a little bit, it’s very easy to stay off of it. I struggled with that. I worked to get myself back on a routine.”
He powered through and finished the program without help, but says that looking back on that time he realizes he didn’t have to. Calbright provides so many resources to help students stay on track. If he had one thing to do over, Adam said, he wouldn’t have done it alone.
“I’d have more meetings with the success counselors and tutors, I’d get more involved with the Slack communities,” He said. “I didn’t plug into the whole Calbright community nearly as much as I could have when I was in the program.”
But Adam did make sure to get real-world work experience, using Calbright’s industry partnerships to work as an intern for an interactive media company. “I was part of a team with three other interns, and it took us a few meetings to figure out what the company actually needed,” Adam said. “We had a few meetings with the CEO of the company and the CEO of a consulting firm he was working with to figure out where everything was at and where they wanted it to go.” Then they worked out a plan.
Now that he’s completed the Project Management program, Adam is working as a paid tutor for other Calbright students while he looks for roles at new companies. “I’m grateful to Calbright. Picking up this new skill has been a very positive experience for me,” he said.
