For Suzanna Spertsyan, BBA Strategic Design and Management graduate, the most important part of her job as a producer at JN Production in Paris is collaboration. 

From producing small fashion shoots for independent brands to creating major campaigns with Chanel and Chloe, Spertsyan has found herself in the role of putting forward a vision while addressing the ideas and opinions of the many people she has to work with.

“Being a producer is oftentimes being a therapist, a negotiator, and a lawyer,” she said. “You have to make everybody happy, so your client is happy, but the talent also feels they have artistic freedom.”

At Parsons Paris, Spertsyan was constantly practicing the creative, interpersonal, and analytical skills she would need as a producer — even if she wasn’t sure at the time what her career would look like after graduation. As a producer juggling many jobs in Paris, she draws on the strategic thinking skills she developed at Parsons Paris every day. “You deal with a lot of things at the same time, and a lot of people and a lot of tasks,” she explained. “And oftentimes, all of these tasks seem equally urgent. But you have to know to prioritize, so that the project doesn't fall apart.”

At Parsons, Spertsyan was first introduced to the importance of strategic thinking in a class called Managing Creative Projects and Teams with professor Carol Overby. Students were tasked with designing a shop for the school’s gallery space to sell work by peers at Parsons Paris. Overby urged the students to treat the assignment as a project with real impact, so the class decided to organize a pop-up store in the heart of Paris. “We painted the walls ourselves and handled everything from the layout of the store to the PR. We proposed product categories that we thought were more sellable, and students ended up making contacts and selling things; it was super crowded,” Spertsyan recalls. “People had to wait outside to get in!” Reflecting on the successful project, Spertsyan says that it provided the pivotal moment in which she “first realized what I was capable of.”