Student advances skills during co-op with advertising firm in Boston

Alissa Roy, a recent graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology’s media arts and technology program who then pursued her MBA with RIT’s Saunders College of Business, completed a co-op with MullenLowe last summer. And working for the advertising firm in its Boston office was a natural fit for her.

Already a fan of the Boston area, Roy knew a few people who worked there and she would go on to gain valuable industry experience. She worked in page layout, using skills and knowledge in brand consistency and photo retouching she developed in her media arts and technology classes.

Roy said her work in senior lecturer Christine Heusner’s advanced retouching course was especially helpful during her time at MullenLowe.

In addition to executing those abilities on a daily basis in a professional setting, Roy was able to use the connections and knowledge gained from her experience with RIT’s student chapter of TAGA (Technical Association of the Graphic Arts), where she served as club president for two years. TAGA allowed Roy to connect with students in other disciplines and really helped show her how people from different areas can come together to make something great. Her co-op required her to work with people from other teams, so the previous experience was valuable.

For her first co-op, Roy was at Hasbro. She said the two experiences were very different. However, the one similarity was that they both allowed her to figure out what she wanted to do for full-time employment post-graduation.

Recently, she began working full-time as a project manager for Bak USA, a computer manufacturing company in Buffalo, N.Y.