Hop Fellows in NYC: Networking & Arts Immersion
Photos by Marcus Middleton
At roughly 9 am on Saturday, April 26, a group of Dartmouth students dressed in their best business casual attire set out onto the streets of New York City's Financial District. A few minutes later, the Hop Fellows found ourselves in the headquarters of Vox Media for our first big event of the day: the Dartmouth Creatives Networking Symposium.
Co-hosted by Dartmouth Alumni Relations and the Hopkins Center for the Arts with support from the Center for Career Design and Vox Media, the Symposium sought to connect Dartmouth students and alumni pursuing careers in the arts with one another.
More specifically, the Symposium was designed to provide an opportunity to the Hop Fellows to "see ways in which creatives have made careers for themselves and what challenges they may have faced," says Daniel Burmester, Manager of Fellowships and Student Initiatives at the Hop. "At the very best," added Burmester, who helped organize the event, "it creates connections with alum[ni] working in creative fields that may help Fellows advance their personal career goals." In addition, the Symposium gives the chance to practice "very practical networking skills."
The event kicked off with a panel discussion moderated by Mary Lou Aleskie, the Howard Gilman '44 Executive Director at the Hop, and featuring alumni Luke Katler '15, Genevieve Adams '11, Lilly Kanso GR '06 and Rachel Dratch '88. The panelists, whose expertise spanned creative fields from comedy to theater to media, reflected on their careers, discussed their current projects and fielded questions from attendees.
After the panel, the room soon lit up with chatter; students and alumni mingled, introducing themselves, some engaging one-on-one, others clustered in groups. I found immense value in walking away with something new from every conversation, whether it was a deeper knowledge of a particular career, a feeling of reassurance upon hearing about others' winding paths or even just the simple pleasure of getting to know another creative.
The Symposium was Dartmouth's first arts-focused alumni event since Burmester's time at the Hop, marking a significant stepping stone in the school's path toward increasing career support for students in the arts.
Events like this one are particularly important for creatives due to the fact that pursuing careers in the arts can depend on the curation of a portfolio, which is "contingent upon developing relationships with people that will grant you opportunities to practice those various things that you're interested in," Burmester said.
Wind Ensemble Fellow Margaret Frazier '25 expressed appreciation for the opportunity to speak to alumni in the arts, especially since the majority of existing career development resources at Dartmouth seem "focused on finance and consulting."
"It's really exciting that we get to talk to people in the arts in different career fields that are less traditional and hear about their career paths, which are fairly nonlinear," Frazier said. "[It] is good to hear, even if you're not necessarily in the arts … that … you can explore, do different things."
For Special Projects Fellow Nic Rago GR '26, interacting with those who have found success in the arts bolstered his confidence as a writer. Having experienced self-doubt throughout the very "singular" process of writing, he found hearing about other creatives' journeys inspired him to continue pursuing his own.
"Being at events like that and talking to people who have made careers in the arts, everything becomes so much more tangible," Rago said. "You hear people who are like, 'Yeah, I was working on this for a bunch of years,' and you start to see yourself in these people's stories. That imposter syndrome begins to wash away a little bit, which then is replaced by confidence."
Watching Fellows and alumni get to know each other, Burmester recalled feeling "very, very happy" in realizing that it was possible to create "a creative community all connected through Dartmouth that [students and alumni] can lean on in various ways."
Through continuing to increase knowledge and accessibility of creative careers, Burmester hopes to someday make an impact not only on Dartmouth and its students, but also the industries that are looking for the talent such creatives can bring.
As the event drew to a close, the Fellows began congregating outside of the event space. A few Fellows lingered inside a while longer than the others, making the most of their conversations. It felt like a fitting way to end the event — with a reminder that it was so necessary for such conversations to blossom that people left wanting more.
Around noon, the Fellows stepped back out into Manhattan to make our way to "The Golden Thread 2: A Fiber Art Exhibition," a fiber arts gallery curated by BravinLee Programs, which is run by alumna Karin Bravin '86 and her husband John Lee. This four-level gallery showcased pieces made with everything from patches of denim to pipe cleaners, as well as site-specific pieces. After a mesmerizing, thought-provoking walk throughout the various levels of the space, the Fellows were lucky enough to hear from Bravin about her experience working in the arts, from curating galleries to running the business itself.
A few hours of free time and a filling dinner at Southwestern restaurant Cowgirl SeaHorse later, the Fellows headed to our final stop of the day: Becoming Eve, an off-Broadway play running at the Abrons Art Center. Before the show, one of the producers spoke to us about the play and its development process, including its workshopping stint in Hanover several summers ago as part of the New York Theatre Workshop-Dartmouth collaboration. Becoming Eve follows the story of a trans woman coming out to her father, blending use of puppetry and dramatic lighting to illustrate flashbacks throughout the main character's life. Even from the very back row of the theater, I found myself captivated by the creation of art in its most electric form—live, and with something to say.
The next day, Sunday, the Fellows were given the chance to roam the city as we wanted—I settled on a gorgeous morning walk through Central Park and the Hamilton matinée for another showstopping performance.
In many ways, New York City is as far from Hanover as you can get. But although this neck of the woods may not possess the same wild, overwhelming bustle of the Manhattan art scene, that feeling of experiencing theater that speaks, music that reverberates, art that provokes, is here, too, and Dartmouth is lucky to get to feel it.