Jeanille Gatta
Degree: 2005, MALS
Job Title: Leader, Market Access Enterprise Solutions
“I knew I would be investing a lot of time earning a degree in addition to working fulltime, so it was vitally important to me to have class time that ensured passion and a quest for learning among a diverse group of people with vibrant interests. In an MBA class, there would be mostly business professionals discussing industry skills, and we likely wouldn’t be discussing Galileo or Hitler or oral history as I did in several courses in the MALS program. I have never really been interested in a degree that was essentially ‘job training,’ and I was continually in awe of my MALS classmates’ life accomplishments.”
“All of the leaders I work for now are enticed by critical thinking from diversely educated individual contributors. As I evolve in my career, I am impressed by leaders or fellow team members who have a diverse education and a variety of interests. Experience or education like that can only deepen an individual in business, or in any career.”
“As a classical ballet student growing up, I was always close to the arts and wanted a curriculum that would allow me to continue that exposure. I was able to pursue an independent study on the history and role of typography with a great professor in Visual Communications, Ray Nichols, as I was about to make a career change into advertising and marketing. And my synthesis project consisted of an oral history of a former ballet teacher, John White, who was an American ballet dancer with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba when Fidel Castro began the company in the late 1950s. I even coordinated a viewing of a related documentary, Mirror Dance, on campus, converging my oral history coursework, my synthesis project, and my love of ballet.
“The Oral History class I took with Dr. Roger Horowitz was life-changing. It not only sparked the idea for my final project, but it brought to life the meaningful difference an oral history can make in the world, whether you’re talking about its place in history or our own family lives.”
Jeanille has a BA in International Relations (and Psychology minor) from Saint Joseph’s University and earned her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from the University of Delaware in 2005. She started off her career in nonprofit fundraising and marketing at The Rock School for the Pennsylvania Ballet before working in Admissions and Development for the University of Delaware. Jeanille transitioned her career into health advertising and marketing and after working for two leading health advertising agencies, she has been working at AstraZeneca in marketing for the past nine years. “At this point in my life,” she says, “I hope to rejuvenate that quest for the interdisciplinary that the MALS program fulfilled and the arts by volunteering for local arts organizations.”