Our students graduate with skills preparing them for employment in a range of professions. Cinema, media arts, and theatre graduates not only work in the arts and entertainment industry but also in law, project management, consulting, public policy, and education.
Alumni Stories
Bill-Kande Badi
“On my very first day as a student my professor referenced two films—Aguirre: the Wrath of God and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Beyond both having fantastic subtitles, I thought these films could not have had less in common. One represented a world of arthouse cinema I had only just started exploring. The other represented a mainstream cinema that my pretentious teenage self had piously rejected. The way in which Professor James McFarland discussed these films on equal footing exemplifies the approach that the program takes towards cinema as a whole– all forms of cinema are worth studying and creating. Instead of trying to force students into any particular mold, the program provides a space in which they can explore their interests and grow into the filmmakers and film scholars they’d like to be.” - Bill-Kande Badi
Carter Hulings
Dreamscape Immersive is a virtual reality company that combines the emotional impact of Hollywood storytelling with the visceral thrill of theme park rides. At Dreamscape, Hulings develops stories and experiences, creates new intellectual property, and identifies opportunities in VR, AR, real-time game engines, and new media formats that expand the way narratives can be performed. Building on the theory, practical skills, and interests he developed as a student in cinema and media studies at Vanderbilt, Carter is exploring the transposition and evolution of cinematic and classic, linear storytelling into new, technology-enhanced art forms across the expanding field of interactive entertainment.
Prior to his time at Dreamscape, Carter helped to build Sony Pictures VR, an immersive incubator within Sony Pictures Entertainment, and developed and distributed such titles as Spider-Man: Far From Home VR and Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son. He also spent a number of years in feature film development at New Regency (Gone Girl, The Revenant, Birdman) and Parkes + MacDonald Productions, where he worked on films including Free Solo, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 2019.
Sam Mallick
Sam was a theatre major and graduate of Vanderbilt’s Law School, where he was a moot court finalist and board member, research assistant, and executive editor of the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law. He later served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, and he now works as an associate in the litigation practice group in the Dallas law office of Haynes Boone.
“In law, whether you’re on the transactional side or litigation side, really what you’re doing is you’re working collaboratively with people, trying to put a finished product out into the world on a deadline. And that’s just like putting on shows at Vanderbilt…it has to be ready by curtain. It’s a hard deadline. And along the way you work with different people who bring different things to the table or who have differing opinions about the way things should go. Having worked collaboratively in theatre with so many personalities was hugely valuable." - Sam Mallick
Isabelle “Izzy” Mann
Izzy was a theatre minor and public policy studies major with a concentration in arts and cultural policy. Her travels abroad to Copenhagen, participation in the theatre Maymester in London, and technical work on multiple productions contributed to the design of her concentration. She now resides in New York City and works as an electrical contracting project manager and was selected as a 2023 Emerging Leader by the Subcontractors Trade Association.
Izzy credits the transferable skills she learned as a stage manager to her success. In 2022, she founded Funroe Productions, a company that invests in and produces theatre in New York. In a recent Broadway season, Funroe invested in two productions: Parade and Bob Fosse’s Dancin’. In March 2023, she met with current majors and minors to discuss their career aspirations and joined them for a performance of the Broadway musical Some Like It Hot at the Shubert Theater.
Dean Mengaziol
“I started in cinema and media arts unsure of what I wanted to pursue, drawn mostly by a hobby of creating and consuming media. The program turned out to be perfect for someone like me because I was introduced to various schools of thought and encouraged to explore. My professors nurtured a space for all ideas to grow, and the program’s balance between theoretical scholarship and practical production experience widened my skillset. Collaborating on creative projects and ideas with peers bonded us together, and many of my classmates remain my dearest friends to this day. I fondly remember planning and launching the Vanderbilt Film Festival, which was a chaotic and enriching communal experience that I’ll always cherish. I emerged from the program with both applicable production skills and a honed critical lens.” — Dean Mengaziol
Laura Payne
Laura majored in theatre and history of art at Vanderbilt and continued her education at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and Brown/Trinity Rep, earning an MFA in acting in 2017. She works as a professional actor, singer, and producer in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
“The small size of Vanderbilt University Theatre and the attention they give to their majors was crucial in me gaining the confidence I needed to apply to graduate school.” -Laura Payne
Ashley Zeiger Peak
“Vanderbilt’s cinema and media arts program ignited an undiscovered passion for me that has forever changed the trajectory of my career and life. Originally set on a pre-med track, as a freshman I took a seminar called Document Nashville, in which we explored both social issues of the city and non-fiction filmmaking in practice. At the end of that term with my first documentary film screened, I was hooked into a program that evolved and challenged me in critical consciousness, active citizenship, and film theory and production. The cast of faculty and other majors created a familial ecosystem that stretched me to develop both as a thinker and a creator. With the support and recommendations of my professors, I was awarded the Keegan Traveling Fellowship to pursue non-fiction filmmaking in a global context through an equal exchange dialogue the year after graduation. After that powerful year of filmmaking and travel, I wanted to be working again with a team, which I become so fond of through my production classes at Vanderbilt.
I have been working within social-impact focused startup companies to build their brands through visual storytelling and a compelling brand narrative. I am forever grateful for the program and faculty who exercised a pedagogy of inquiry-based learning and experiential collaboration that allowed me to explore and develop creatively.” — Ashley Zeiger Peak
Mary Smith
Mary was a theatre minor (focusing on technical theatre and design) with a major in educational studies and second language studies. She currently lives in Philadelphia and works for the Department of State. The skills she gained from her theatre minor and volunteering around the department have helped her in a number of professional capacities such as planning internal and external training programs and organizing special events like a recent visit from the Secretary of State. She’s on the board of directors for NCT, a local community theatre, and stage-managed their production of Oliver! in the fall of 2023. By getting involved in a community theatre, she was able to quickly develop new friendships after moving to Philadelphia.