Group Language Program Alumni

2021

Maud O'Connor (Japanese & Chinese)

I was accepted by the JET Program and am now working as a coordinator for international relations at Kochi City Hall in Kochi, Japan.

2020

Thomas Robertson (French & Chinese; DWA)

tjrobertson323@gmail.com
After graduation in 2020, I was an intern with the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, where I used my French language skills in open-source intelligence research. During the pandemic, I also worked with the Census and in the airline industry, as well as stints writing and translating blog posts for an African digital policy thinktank (CIPESA) and as a volunteer translator with the New Mexico Immigrant Law Center. All of these opportunities provided ample chances to use the French and Chinese I studied at Oxy. I am currently a Fulbright Student Researcher in Mauritius, where I am doing research at the intersection of ICT and international relations.

Karin Uzawa (Japanese and Linguistics)

karinuzawa@gmail.com

In 2020, I graduated from Oxy and was supposed to head to Japan under the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET program) as an Assistant Language Teacher. However, the pandemic delayed things, but eventually made it in June 2021. I am placed in Fujieda City in Shizuoka Prefecture (about 3 hours away from Tokyo by bus). As an Assistant Language Teacher, I cooperate with elementary and junior high school teachers to make English classes fun by planning suitable games and activities. I work with kids ranging from young as 3rd grade to old as 8th grade!

Jessamine Jeter (French and Linguistics; Cognitive Science)

jjeter@hawaii.edu

After graduation in May 2020, I accepted two full-time remote internships: one with IBM for a psycholinguistics study on language adaptation and syntactic alignment, and the other with the University of British Columbia for a first language acquisition study. I also started working as a prospect researcher and data analyst for a local nonprofit providing housing and resources to youth 13-25 experiencing or at risk of homelessness in Washington State and simultaneously applied to graduate school. In Fall 2021 I moved to Honolulu and began working towards an M.A. in Linguistics at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, focusing specifically on Language Documentation and Revitalization.

2017

Dexter Blackwell (Russian and Linguistics)

dexter.blackwell1@gmail.com

After graduating from Oxy, I taught English in Eastern Ukraine on a Fulbright. Afterwards, In May 2021, I finished my MA in Russian and Eastern European Area Studies at Indiana University, where I wrote my thesis exploring Russia's use of disinformation to achieve national security objectives. Recently, I accepted a Quality Manager position with Epic in Madison, Wisconsin.

2016

Lena Smith (French and Linguistics)

lenacelestesmith@gmail.com

Since Sept. 2021, I have been working on Conversational AI as a Conversation Designer and AI model trainer. I teach an AI system to make linguistic predictions about "intents", i.e. helping a virtual agent understand and correctly categorize questions so it can converse with people. The company I work for is Boost.ai, a Norwegian company that is starting to get a foothold in the U.S. I got the job by reaching out to a fellow Oxy alum! On a daily basis, I have new problems to solve, some linguistic—I do a lot of careful word-choosing—and some technical.

I did a lot of jobs right after Oxy before finding a grad school program that completely lit me up. Having studied Language and Linguistics at a school with standards as high as Oxy's and having studied abroad while in undergrad both helped me gain admission to the challenging and competitive MSc in Speech and Language Processing at the University of Edinburgh. A couple of years after Oxy, I started teaching myself my programming and couldn't stop. In my master's, I learned how to program and apply complex computational algorithms—including neural networks—to language problems. After achieving my master's, I worked on developing linguistic datasets for Grammarly and LinkedIn to use for machine learning until finding my current job.

2015

Hannah Grant (Spanish and Linguistics)

After graduating from Oxy, I attended a post-bacc program in Communication Sciences & Disorders at Chapman University for a year to prepare for graduate school. I then spent a year working as a Speech-Language Pathology Assistant (SLPA) at Etiwanda School District. In 2017, I moved to San Diego to pursue a master's degree in Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University. I graduated in 2019 and have been working as a speech-language pathologist for San Diego Unified School District since then, working with preschool, elementary, and middle school students. My particular passions are working with our younger students to support developing language skills (especially in culturally and linguistically diverse children), as well as treating phonological disorders in children's speech to increase intelligibility.

2013

Isadora Zanon

Since graduating I've lived and taught English in Spain and France. I then moved to Germany where I completed an MA in National and Transnational Studies from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. After graduating, I relocated to Italy where I worked as an elementary school teacher. After two years in Milan, I moved to New York City and am currently working as an associate producer for the travel show Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas. I love getting to use my language skills to communicate with people in my job and in my life in general! In addition to the Spanish, French and Arabic that I learned at Oxy, I've also picked up some German and Italian. I want to thank all of the wonderful language professors at Oxy that taught and supported me while I was there!

2010

Kendall Kiyohara (Chinese and Japanese)

Since graduation, I've worked in various Training & Education roles, including at Apple and Microsoft, as well as teaching Japanese as an after school class at Iolani School in Honolulu. Currently, I am the Learning Specialist at and HR company, where I train clients on HR topics such as Professional Communication, Leadership Skills, and Diversity & Sensitivity.