As high school students are just getting back to the routine of being back in class, several of Floral Park’s former students are now beginning their new lives after college. Floral Park’s 2010 high school graduates have now finished college and entered “the real world.” Despite a fickle job market, Floral Park Memorial graduate, Christopher Clarke has found work in downtown Boston, MA at a company called Amino Apps.
“I began as a marketing intern over the summer and am now a full-time member of the team doing inbound marketing and community management work,” said Clarke, a Duke University graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology.
Amino Apps is a Google Ventures-funded company that produces social networks that bring together niche community and fandoms around their common interest. As a company that has just recently started up, it has already appeared in an August edition of The Boston Globe.
Clarke knows that in the startup world it’s hard to say how long one will stay with the same company since entrepreneurs are always up for new challenges, but there is one thing he is confident about.
“The only thing I can say for sure about the future is that I want to be helping interesting and brilliant people turn their ideas into a reality,” says Clarke.
Fellow Floral Park Memorial graduate of the class of 2010, Kelly Chiello has found success working as an online photo editor for New York Magazine. Here, she helps illustrate articles by researching or designing images for stories on various blogs for the website.
“I love the effort and creative environment in the offices of a magazine,” says Chiello, a current graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) with a BFA in photography. “It’s comforting to work with people who have the same common goals as you.”
Chiello has been interested in photography since about eighth grade and started with a point-and-shoot camera while taking pre-college photography classes at FIT on the weekends.
“My favorite thing about photography is the amount of power that can come from one picture,” says Chiello. “I’ve spent the last couple of years working on a couple of projects and it really speaks volumes when you compose an image that makes the viewer feel a range of emotions.”
Floral Park resident and Chaminade graduate, Thomas Brennan has begun to break into one of the most difficult fields: sports journalism.
Recently Brennan has begun a seasonal internship with the New York Jets as a reporter. Here, he covers all aspects of the New York football team, including training camp, preseason games, practice, games, community events and even the cheerleading squad.
The dream to be a sports journalist began for Brennan while watching television.
“I was watching ESPN one day when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life,” says Brennan, a recent graduate from Seton Hall University with a BA in journalism. “Somebody was being interviewed and I said to myself, ‘That’s a stupid question.’”
As a high school student Brennan always wanted to be close to football and playing the sport wasn’t an option after a back injury.
For the moment, Brennan is living his dream and he can only hope that his future will hold similar possibilities as his present.
“Hopefully I’ll be covering the Jets for a daily or a website,” Brennan says of his future career aspirations. “That’s been my dream for a while and I won’t stop until I get there, either.”
