During a year abroad studying at the New York University (NYU) campus in Berlin, Germany, Mika O’Malley ’17 found love and a passion for German culture, arts, and museums. After completing her bachelor’s degree in New York, she returned to Germany, earned a master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management in Hamburg, and began working in marketing.
Working in Germany and Learning the Language
O’Malley is starting a new job at Ameo Marketing, an Amazon marketing agency where she will support 10 Amazon sellers to manage digital ad campaigns. She previously worked for another Amazon marketing firm.
Having no prior experience speaking German (O’Malley took Spanish through 10th grade and French during her junior and senior years) before her first year abroad about five years ago, O’Malley has come a long way, regularly speaking German at work and throughout her life.
“I moved to Paris my freshman year of college and got to use the French skills I developed, then went to Berlin for my junior year, and I started taking classes and learned German in two years,” O’Malley said. “I’ve decided to really immerse myself.”
O’Malley expressed that learning a new language starts at home to build a strong foundation along with the skills you learn in a language class. She started with watching children’s television shows.
“If a child can learn language and basic knowledge from children’s programs, you can learn from that too, and then work your way up to more complex media,” O’Malley said. “After mastering the basics, I moved on to other TV shows, podcasts, and books. My undergraduate thesis involved reading a lot of legal documents in German and immersing myself in German media helped me complete the project and make Dean’s list.”
Learning How to Shift Gears
O’Malley shared that she didn’t necessarily plan to work in digital marketing, but has gained perseverance and flexibility through her career journey.
“It can often feel like I should have it all figured out by now, and shifting gears is something I’m still working through,” O’Malley said. “However, I recently met a woman who is 46 years old working a potential dream job of mine, and she told me that it took her until this year to figure out what she wanted to do. Being in my mid-20s, being patient is the hardest lesson to continue learning.”
In the future, O’Malley hopes to work for a museum, combining her new skills in marketing with her background in cultural studies, or start her own art gallery.
“I would love to work with international artists from around the globe digitally, and have them travel to Germany for their residencies,” O’Malley said. She is particularly interested in working with artists from war-torn countries to help them share their experience through their work.
Reflecting on Lessons from GA
O’Malley is a “GA Lifer,” someone who began their journey at the school in PreK. She shared that her parents chose GA because it instills a lifelong love of learning.
“You don’t realize how well ingrained that is until you go to college and meet people who don’t necessarily have the same drive or hunger for knowledge as you do,” O’Malley said. “The people I connected with at GA had the same yearning to know more and I still keep in contact with them regularly, sharing an interesting article or publication.”
Being a part of the GA community also allows you to create strong and long-lasting friendships. However, once O’Malley entered college, she realized it was more difficult to make friends in a new environment than with people you have spent your school years with.
“I was in Paris and didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks because I didn’t know how to be social with new people,” O’Malley said. “I still have difficulty with this but have grown a lot. My advice to other GA Lifers is that if you make a big jump to a new city or country, be ready to experience loneliness and be very open to new things you weren’t expecting to like. You have to be uncomfortable before finding your place.”
Reflecting on her teachers at GA, O’Malley said that the ones who kept encouraging her made the most impact, and Dr. Peter (Doc) Drewniany 1760 came to mind.
“I felt a lot more confident in writing after taking Doc’s class, and I used that confidence at NYU,” O’Malley said. “A lot of the class discussions we had about books in Doc’s class were also useful in my master’s program. I put more thought into the different perspectives introduced in literature from my experience at GA, while a lot of my fellow students had more difficulty thinking of things from other perspectives.”
O’Malley even recollected her middle school experience at GA.
“I was overconfident in middle school, and Mr. Stephens would keep his cool and let me be myself as long as I was doing my work and paying attention,” O’Malley said. “He would say ‘you can do whatever you want as long as you know what you’re talking about.’”
Being a member of GA’s award-winning Belfry theater program was another standout memory. She talks about it with friends in Germany, sharing about how it is the oldest theater program of its kind in the United States.
“We built amazing sets and were able to lower actors down to the stage from the rafters,” O’Malley said. “People are always shocked that we had the budget and support to achieve these things, but GA fortunately put a lot of funding into the arts. Some classmates from my time at GA are very successful in theater or acting, like Nate Mann, who was in a show called ‘Masters of the Air’ and on Broadway. It’s fun to see what other former theater kids are doing and how they’ve integrated it into their careers.”
O’Malley recently visited Germantown Academy when she was back in the area to visit family for the holidays and show her school and community to her partner Ole, who is from Lüneburg. Head of School Rich Schellhas 1760 gave them a tour of the campus and they happily conversed in German. We wish O’Malley all the best in her continued travel adventures and reaching her career goals.