When I chose the Sport Management program at Syracuse University's Falk College, I had no idea I was setting the foundation for something far bigger than anything I could have mapped out at a mere 18. While I dreamed of a career negotiating contracts and representing the best of the best, my time at SU had something different planned for me. Fast forward ten years, and I'm happily the Co-Founder and Executive Producer at Filmiamo Productions — a video production company rooted in storytelling, community, and, yes, a whole lot of Syracuse orange.
My time at Syracuse quickly revealed one thing about myself: I loved events. Not just attending them, but building them, executing them, and feeling the energy of a room come together around a shared purpose. That love guided my internships, my campus involvement, and ultimately my first job out of college at a local marketing agency, where I was producing hundreds of events each year for cell phone stores across the country. It was intricate planning, but what I truly wanted was the onsite execution and being in the room where it all comes together.
That eventually led me to a corporate event planning role, where I managed events of all shapes and sizes, and in a variety of time zones. COVID-19 eventually brought that chapter to an end through layoffs, but I look back on that experience with nothing but gratitude. It sharpened my planning instincts, deepened my love of travel, and made me even more certain of what I was meant to do.
Of course, I couldn't tell my story, or the Filmiamo story, without talking about Luke. We met during our senior year at Syracuse, when we were both selected as Remembrance Scholars and found ourselves serving side-by-side on the community outreach committee. His passion for giving back sparked some of our very first conversations, and it's a value that remains central to both of us in our family and the work we do today.
Luke graduated from the Newhouse School and was actively building his freelance videography career at the time. What had always felt like a distant dream — working together — started to feel like a very real possibility. In 2020 and 2021, we worked together under For Pause, producing fundraising events for local nonprofits and telling their stories on camera. It was through that work that we realized just how naturally my event planning background and Luke's production expertise complemented each other. Filmiamo Productions was born from that realization.
Today, when I trace back the roots of our success, so much of it leads straight to Syracuse. Many of our closest clients and connections are fellow alumni. The business skills we rely on were honed through classroom projects and extracurricular experiences. And the partnership at the heart of everything we do was forged while serving as scholars in our senior year.
Getting to give back to the University that gave so much to us is one of the greatest privileges. Syracuse sparked my love of events, deepened my commitment to community, and handed me the skills and relationships that make Filmiamo possible. Four years was never going to be enough — and I'm grateful every single day for what those years built. My hope in giving back is current and future students feel that same joy and inspiration when they look back at their college years.
You can read more about my story and continued involvement at Syracuse here: Impact of Collective Action
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