After receiving her bachelor’s degree in Radio, Television and Film, Michelle Atkins, MBA ’07, landed a job in production at Austin’s Fox-7 television station. While gaining experience over the next three years, she felt some of her ideas weren’t getting the attention from management she had hoped they would. Determined to take her career to the next level, Michelle enrolled in the inaugural class of the Master of Business Administration in Digital Media Management.

Support Needed to Succeed

Michelle found the support she was looking for from her professors, classmates and the business community. During her classes, she explored new media technologies such as peer-to-peer networks, Internet TV and social networking web sites.

Through these explorations she examined issues that she hadn’t been exposed to before, such as intellectual property ownership and new media distribution models, all which helped her during an seven-week summer internship with Austin PBS-affiliate KLRU. Her duties included researching new technologies for the station and delivering her findings to the board of directors in the form of a Digital Primer.

“It’s great that so many people are behind this program and supporting us,” she says. “We were constantly encouraged by program director Russell Rains to move forward and seek out new ideas.”

The Next Step: Becoming Her Own Boss

In May 2007, Michelle became one of the first graduates to earn a MBA in Digital Media Management. She plans to apply her new knowledge and skills by starting her own digital media business — a marketing consulting firm with a classmate that will focus on new media for existing companies.

“It’s a big world out there,” she says. “I’m ready to get back in the game.”