
How the Wachter Fellowship Helped These Students Launch Careers in L.A. The fellowship, offered through Berklees Career Center, provides students with the means to overcome logistical and financial obstacles standing in the way of internships.
By
Bryan Parys
March 29, 2023
In summer 2022, student William Tiong secured an A&R internship based in Los Angeles, and it was a dream come true-almost. The internship was unpaid, and Tiong, an international student from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, didn't know anyone in L.A., and due to his visa status, wasn't eligible for any kind of paid work outside of Berklee's campus. On his own, the internship just couldn't happen.
Determined not to let the opportunity slip by, Tiong applied for a Wachter Fellowship, one of the fellowship programs offered through Berklees Career Center, and that made all the difference. The Wachter Fellowship was an incredible opportunity to pursue my career aspirations, overcome financial barriers, and gain invaluable experience in a field that I'm passionate about, Tiong said.
The intern next to you one day could be the executive in the next few years. Establishing and maintaining genuine friendships with industry peers will put your name in rooms you'd otherwise work years to enter.
- Dom Jones B.M. 19
Since its inception in 2016, the Wachter Fellowship has helped many students overcome logistical and financial obstacles standing in the way of career development opportunities in L.A. The program is the brainchild of Paul Wachter, an investment advisor and entrepreneur who has worked with high-profile clients such as Time Warner, Beats Music, and LeBron James.
Wachter, who recently joined Berklee's Board of Trustees, makes it a point to mentor the fellows, including meeting with students during their stays in L.A. and arranging networking opportunities with the likes of FINNEAS, Darkroom CEO Justin Lubliner, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
To learn more about how the program has helped Berklee students launch their careers, read about Tiong and two other past Wachter fellows, Dom Jones B.M. '19 and Pedro Osuna B.M. '19, in the following profiles.
Pedro Osuna
While working as a guide for a virtual reality cube in the Berklee library in 2018, composer and Granada, Spain, native Pedro Osuna happened to strike up a conversation with Stefanie Henning, associate vice president for career and digital strategy. As he gave her a tour of the VR device, they got to talking about Osuna's desire to build a career as a film composer, and she told him about the Wachter Fellowship, which he applied for and received. I would not have been able to go to L.A. that summer without that fellowship, Osuna said.
While in L.A., Osuna worked for composer and fellow alum Lucas Vidal B.M. 07, and by his third day on the job, he was working on the Netflix show Elite. He made extensive use of the access to the technology he was granted, and often stayed for hours after his shifts in order to apply his new knowledge to his own music. I often fell asleep on the bus back to Hollywood and I would wake up in the middle of nowhere at one or two in the morning, he said. Don't tell my mother.
His experiences that summer changed the game for me, he said, and put him on a path that led to jobs on major films including Klaus, the 2020 James Bond film No Time to Die, Marvel's Thor: Love and Thunder, and the Oscar-nominated Argentina, 1985.
I can draw a straight line from my internship to having the skills that allowed me to get to and through all of that, Osuna said. Without Berklee, I might still be a copyist in my hometown. But I am just getting started.
Listen to Osuna talk about his composition approach on Sounds of Berklee:
<br />
Dom Jones
Image by Ian Davis
In 2019, Dom Jones B.M. '19 knew she wanted to eventually move to L.A. to pursue a career in music for film and television, but she also knew she couldn't afford to take any of the unpaid internships she needed to kickstart her career. And yet, later that summer, there she was, living in the Valley and working in West Hollywood, across the street from the Roxy Theater. Receiving a Wachter Fellowship, she said, provided not only the mentorship, but the necessary financial bridge, which allowed me to live in L.A. while I interned at a small music publisher in the sync department.
The momentum from the internship continued to push Jones further, as she's now working as a sync specialist at Sony Music Entertainment. She learned early in on her internship that the key to being successful is relationships. Working in sync, that means fostering relationships with music supervisors to, as she said, not only relay the music of our artists, but also their overall story and brand.
She also said that casting a wide net in building those relationships beyond your specific job description is critical. One should never allow a relationship to languish! Jones said, pointing out that most people believe networking up is the best way forward. Networking laterally is just as important, she went on to say. The intern next to you one day could be the executive in the next few years. Establishing and maintaining genuine friendships with industry peers will put your name in rooms you'd otherwise work years to enter.
William Tiong
The internship that William Tiong almost couldn't take was in the A&R department at Artist Publishing Group (APG), whose clients include 24kGoldn, Ava Max, Rico Nasty, and Berklee alumni Charlie Puth B.M. '13 and Salem Ilese '19, among many more. I knew this internship was a chance to learn from real A&Rs and gain valuable insight into how the industry operates, Tiong said. It was a key stepping stone to my professional career, so I was determined to make it work no matt
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
17/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
17/07/2026
Production workers at Brooklyn Bowl's Williamsburg location voted 15-1 to join IATSE Local 4. The bargaining unit covers 24 production workers at the venue,...
17/07/2026
DAZN and ADI Predictstreet have announced an exclusive global strategic partners...
17/07/2026
Zixi and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) have announced a strategic integrati...
17/07/2026
Professional Fighters League (PFL) has announced a multi-year partnership with E...
17/07/2026
Spectrum Business has announced Spectrum TV Control Pro, a centralized app-based...
17/07/2026
Clark Wire and Cable has announced that Rick Fernandez, Managing Director of Axxion Consulting, will serve as Independent Manufacturers Representative for Centr...
17/07/2026
TikTok, the NBA, and the WNBA have announced a multi-year global content partnership covering highlights distribution, creator access to marquee events, live-ga...
17/07/2026
Company alleges article contained false and misleading claims regarding customer data...
17/07/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
17/07/2026
(L-R) Edward James Olmos, Luis Valdez, Lou Diamond Phillips and Lupe Valdez attend American Pachuco: The Legend Of Luis Valdez Premiere during the 2026 Sundan...
17/07/2026
Full engine access with reduced soundset
Sonuscore have steadily been introducing a selection of reduced-cost and free versions of their flagship products r...
17/07/2026
Two new special-edition models revealed
Over the past week, Arturia have launched special-edition versions of both their premium MIDI controller and stage p...
17/07/2026
Original founder now back at the helm
In a message posted on his personal social media accounts, Dirk Ulrich has announced that both Plugin Alliance and Bra...
17/07/2026
Legendary presenter Anton Enus to sign off from SBS World News after 27 years wi...
17/07/2026
Millions rise before dawn to watch FIFA World Cup 2026 semi-finals on SBS
17 July, 2026
Media releases
England v Argentina attracted a Total TV reach of a...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Foundry Releases SmartRoto for Nuke
Brie Clayton July 17, 2026
0 Comments
Spline-based AI powered plugin accelerates time-consuming rotoscoping, helping...
17/07/2026
A Short Documentary About a Giant Pencil Edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton July 17, 2026
0 Comments
SBIFF jury award winner finished fro...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Lightware has published its second voluntary Sustainability Report, showing how energy efficiency, product longevity and responsible material use are increasing...
17/07/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced Griptape Enterprise, a new tier of the Griptape AI workflow orchestration platform, extended to meet the str...
17/07/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the availability of SmartRoto, a new AI-powered plugin upgrade for Nuke, NukeX, Nuke Studio, and Nuke Indie ...
17/07/2026
The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available!
Brie Clayton July 16, 2026
0 Comments
Fairlight Live is a new audio mixer designed fo...
17/07/2026
Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP
Andy Marken July 16, 2026
0 Comments
Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There\s no win...
17/07/2026
From intimate acoustic settings to large-scale festival stages, her focus has remained constant: preserving the true natural voice of the violin in every perfor...
17/07/2026
New and returning series, live festival broadcasts, powerful documentaries and major sporting moments headline RT Radio 1's summer schedule
RT Radio 1 is...
17/07/2026
Think of a professional athlete. What separates elite performers is what happens...
17/07/2026
Up For The Match - Live From Croke Park this Saturday at 8pm on RT One and RT ...
17/07/2026
RT Commercial has today announced DiscoverIreland.ie, as sponsor of The Traitor...
16/07/2026
Media organisations with tested plans for new products, services or revenue models can now apply for grants of up to 30,000 through the Business Innovation Syn...
16/07/2026
This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work
In the live-sports-video in...
16/07/2026
TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...
16/07/2026
ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...
16/07/2026
FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...
16/07/2026
Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...
16/07/2026
ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...
16/07/2026
Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...
16/07/2026
The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...
16/07/2026
Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...
16/07/2026
Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...
16/07/2026
The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...
16/07/2026
With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...
16/07/2026
In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...
16/07/2026
Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...