By Sarah Kyo, Web Communications Specialist
(This summer, SJSU Today hits the road, visiting students and recent grads on the job across the country and around the world. Our Spartans at Work series continues with mass communications alumna Carolina Janssen.)
Where will an SJSU degree take you? How about a job with one of the hottest, most influential companies in the world? Carolina Janssen, ’10 Mass Communications, is part of Twitter’s International Market Development team, helping this San Francisco-headquartered service reach the rest of the world.
“I never understood how much work it really is to bring a product that was created in this country and make it work in another country,” Janssen said. “It’s not just doing the same thing there. You have to really change a lot of really small things.”
Janssen, a German native, started working at Twitter two years ago as Localization and International Support for German-speaking users. Now she is part of a diverse team, conducting market analysis, and credits her alma mater for preparing her for this role. Janssen had lived at SJSU International House, a dormitory for U.S. and international students. She also worked at I-House and at Studies in American Language, now known as International Gateways.
“San Jose State is an obviously very international university, and I think just living in this environment of people from all over the world for two years prepared me perfectly for particularly the position that I got at Twitter,” she said. “I think it also made me more sensitive toward the different perspectives that different cultures have.”
You can follow Janssen on Twitter at @lija.