Hello! My name is Alessandro and I graduated from John Cabot University in 2015, majoring in Communications. Within my first year out of college, I moved to China. After studying Mandarin in Beijing for nine months, I was offered an internship at CCTV Outlook, which is part of China’s state television network, as a production assistant on a documentary about Italy’s wine and food culture. Basically, I’m editing footage and helping translate interviews from Italian to Mandarin.
This opportunity is a direct result of the quest I’m on to find work that truly fulfills me as a person. I am reading books on the subject and I think that although the quest is far from over, getting to work on something that I am passionate about like film is a good step in the right direction. With automation taking over so many of the jobs that defined the past century, it’s a good time to reinvent ourselves, directing our skills and attitudes to match them with the world’s demands.
China is emerging as the world’s new economic leader, which means a lot is happening in Beijing. Netflix recently signed a deal to partner with iQiyi, its Chinese equivalent. The work I’m doing now is also a way to get closer and understand this environment that will be the main economic fuel of the next decades.
I’m very grateful to John Cabot for the way it shaped my journey. Professor Brian Thomson was the first person who trusted me enough to put a camera in my hands. Professor Giulia Amati’s editing class taught me something about creativity that I think I can best express with a line spoken by a television network’s editor to one of his reporters in the show Newsroom, in a conversation about a story the reporter is working on: “We don’t need it fast, we need it right. But we need it fast.”
Alessandro Ceschi
Communications Major
Class of 2015
Hometown: Padova, Italy
