Can a love of wine lead to a dream job? For Emily Atkinson, it did — along with a Online Master of Science in Digital Media Management from USC.
Atkinson, who graduated from the program in 2023, impressed her professors with her capstone project on digital marketing efforts for a local winery. It didn’t only leave an impact on her professors, though. It also impressed her future employer.
Atkinson graduated from San Jose State University in 2018, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing. But when she returned home to Stockton, California, with no job lined up, she was at a loss for what to do next.
“I knew I just needed something to start working again and something to fill my time,” she said. “I was just sitting at home doing nothing! So I applied for a job to work in a tasting room out in Lodi, California, which is only 20-ish minutes away from Stockton.”
The tasting room was where Atkinson’s passion for wine bloomed.
“I got to serve wine. I got to learn all about it. That’s really where I started to love knowing about wine and learning it and getting to see all these things behind it,” Atkinson said.
The job also enabled her to try a new career path when she started to work on the winery’s marketing efforts, including its social media and email campaigns. Atkinson went on to become a social media specialist for the University of the Pacific, where she was soon promoted to a manager role. It was at this point that she realized it was time to further her education.
“I’d always known … that I really wanted to get my master’s degree,” Atkinson said.
As she researched different programs, an ad for the Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) online program at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism caught Atkinson’s attention.
The more Atkinson looked into the MSDMM program, the more it appealed to her. She loved that it was online, so she could keep her job and wouldn’t have to move away from her family. She appreciated the various digital media aspects it covered and knew the school itself had an amazing reputation.
“I was like, OK, I’m going to try. I don’t know if I’m going to get in. I don’t think I am. Who knows?” she said. “And then it did happen! That was such a special moment.”
Atkinson said the program was “a fantastic experience.” She was nervous at first, especially because she had struggled with time management and procrastination during her undergraduate career. But that wasn’t a problem with the MSDMM program, she said.
“I found it so much easier this time around to be able to manage my time because it was a topic that I was incredibly interested in,” Atkinson said. “So I felt invested and I was so excited to read all the readings and watch all the videos and be a part of the discussions and do the assignments … and it continued to line up with the things that I was doing in my job.”
In fact, Atkinson found she was regularly applying lessons she learned in class to her day job, whether it was creating digital media campaigns, perfecting briefs or finding ways to employ artificial intelligence. She cited the faculty’s real-world expertise as a big reason she felt invested in the program.
“There were so many amazing things that these professors were able to bring to the table,” she said. “They were not teaching us from readings or audios or whatever. They were actually giving us real-life examples and walking us through how something was going to look in day-to-day life, whether it’s at an agency or major company, a startup, whatever it is.”
Atkinson was also initially concerned about how being an online student would impact her experience. But she appreciated USC’s effort to ensure online students feel connected to the Trojan community, she said.
“We had access to everything that an in-person student had, whether it was joining groups or being a part of the campus conversations, or seeing different motivational speakers that were coming on to campus, or internship opportunities, job opportunities … you just felt connected,” she recalled.
The program didn’t just teach Atkinson valuable skills, however — her capstone project also helped her land the perfect role.
While Atkinson was narrowing her focus for the capstone, the professor teaching the capstone class helped her see that her true passion was wine and encouraged her to follow that path.
“My capstone ended up being a digital marketing agency that focused on wineries in the Lodi, California area. What I ended up doing was I worked with a photographer and videographer, and we were able to partner with a local winery in Lodi, California to create content for them,” she explained.
Atkinson built a website for the winery, filmed a promotional video, created comprehensive social media and digital marketing plans and even crafted an updated tasting flight to drive people’s interest in the winery’s story.
“My capstone really was telling the story of the wine and trying to make it easier and feel more approachable and more friendly in that sense — because wine can feel standoffish,” she said.
Her capstone professor — Joseph James Itaya, who is also the MSDMM program director — loved Atkinson’s project.
“This is a marvelous success story about how DMM’s Capstone serves as a launchpad for our students’ careers,” Itaya said. “I recall distinctly that early on, Emily was torn about her career path. But through the DMM curriculum process of examining her own Ikigai and professional life purpose, she honed in on the wine industry. She built a proof of concept for her dream job, and the rest is history.”
Since the project helped Atkinson determine that wine was her true passion, she began applying for jobs in the industry. When she interviewed at E & J Gallo Winery for a social media specialist position, she was able to point to her capstone as evidence of what she could achieve. She was hired.
“I’m so happy with where I ended up and the capstone really helped me,” she said. “It demonstrated my abilities, my passion.”
Learn more about the Online Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program.
This story originally appeared on the USCOnline website.