Alumni News
We are always eager to hear from our alumni and friends In Japanese Studies. Please share your news with us. With your permission, we will share your news on our newsletter site.
We welcome all news, but especially experiences of how a Japanese Studies major helped lead to a career. Our students are also eager to learn of internships and job opportunities.
Recent News!
Hayley Snowden '19, a Marketing major and Japanese Studies minor, is a senior strategist with the global creative agency Wunderman Thompson. Hayley went full-time with the agency after completing a summer internship that, she writes, "was definitely secured in part by my study abroad/familiarity with Japanese culture." (2024)
David Ranzini '12 received a J.D. at the University of Virginia School of Law in 2020, and is a corporate associate in the Tokyo office of Morrison Foerster LLP. David completed a bilingual Masters Program in Law at Kyushu University, in Japan. After graduating from W&M, he spent three years with the JET program, working in Akita (where he won his town's "Dialect Speech Contest"). He also spent a summer in Akita on W&M's study-abroad program with Akita International University (2024).
Daniel Birriel '18 completed a graduate program at the prestigious Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California. Daniel graduated with a concentration in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), focusing on Japanese. He spent a year in Japan on our exchange program with Akita International University. He was inducted into the Japanese Honors Society. (2024)
Sydney DeBoer '18, is a Coordinator for International Relations with the JET Programme, working in Minamiboso, in Chiba Prefecture. Sydney graduated wiith a concentration in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, focusing on Japan. She completed a study abroad at Keio University, in Tokyo. (2020)
Shumin "Yuffie" Gong '16 headed back to Tokyo after graduating, to take a job with Goldman Sachs. A Finance major and a Japanese Studies minor, Yuffie spent the summer of her Junior year in Tokyo on a very rewarding William & Mary internship with Canon Corp. (you can read about her experience here). She found her job through the Japanese-English bilingual Career Forum, an excellent resource for graduating students, held annually in Boston in November.
Mike Crandol ‘09 is a lecturer at Leiden University, in the Netherlands, moving there after teaching for several years in the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Mike double-majored in English and East Asian Studies at W&M (where he was one of the first recipients of the Kinyo Prize for excellence in Japanese language study). He received his PhD in Asian Literatures, Cultures, and Media at the University of Minnesota in 2015. He also taught for one year at W&M. (2024)
Jon "Nic" Querolo '16 is a journalist with Bloomberg News. Nic graduated with a self-designed major in Japanese Studies and a second major in Finance and Business Administration, after spending his sophomore year in Tokyo studying at W&M's partner institution, Keio University. He previously worked as a producer in the DC Bureau of Japan's public television station, NHK and purused a masters of financial journalism at Columbia University. (2024)
Elizabeth Denny ‘14 works for a leading research firm. Elizabeth received highest honors for her thesis on Japan's famed Takarazuka Revue. After graduation, she completed an internship in international affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and was accepted to Harvard University’s East Asian Languages and Civilizations PhD program on a full fellowship, then moved to the private sector, working first at a boutique international consulting firm, where clients included Fortune 50 companies and public and private Japanese entities, before joining her current firm. Elizabeth attributes her success to both linguistic skills and and skills learned in cultural-studies classes: "my critical thinking, my writing abilities, my understanding of international history and politics; and, above all else, my empathy for and appreciation of a tradition outside the one I grew up in .... I never worry about those skills becoming outdated or non-transferrable" (2024).
Andrew Kim ‘15 is teaching English with the JET Program in Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku. (2015)
Michael Le ‘15 is teaching English with the JET Program, also on Shikoku. (2015)
Isabel Bush ‘15 is also teaching English with the JET Program. (2015)
Jeff DeMars '11 worked as Public Relations Coordinator for the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations in New York, where he managed communications with foreign and Japanese press, organizes cultural events, and provides information assistance to Mission diplomats and dignitaries. He previously worked for the Center on Japanese Economy and Business at Columbia University and the Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C. (2015)
Chris Bubb '10 is a Specially Appointed Researcher at Osaka University, doing translation and editing work. Previously, Chris worked for Interac, teaching English in junior high and elementary schools. (2024)
Loretta Scott '10 works in marketing/business development in New York City. She started a Youtube series called "The Difficulties of Japanese" in 2007, produced Japanese langauge-learning videos for YesJapan's website www.yesjapan.com, and maintains a Youtube Channel at KemushiChan. (2024)
Julian Oreska '09 works as a product developer for the toy company Bandai. Julian was a double Business and East Asian Studies major who also completed the Canon Corp. internship in summer 2009. (2024)
Jennie Davy '08 is the exhibits and artifacts curator at Swem Library. Jennie spent a semester abroad at Keio University in Tokyo. She then completed a Master of Arts degree in History Museum Studies at the Cooperstown Graduate Program before returning to W&M. (2024)
Michael Berman '06 is currently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University. Previously, he was a Visiting Foreign Researcher in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo. Michael earned his PhD in Anthropology at UC San Diego. He previously earned a master's degree in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Palgrave published Michael's book-length translation of Yuki Masami's Foodscapes of Contemporary Japanese Women: An Ecocritical Journey around the Hearth of Modernity. (2024)
Peter Luebke '05 co-authored with Professor Rachel DiNitto, “Maruo Suehiro’s ‘Planet of the Jap’: Revanchist Fantasy or War Critique?” which appeared in the September 2011 volume of the Australian journal Japanese Studies. He received his PhD in Southern History at the University of Virginia and now works as a historian at Naval History and Heritage Command (2024)
