During Middlesex Middle School Career Day, 8th grade students learned about many fascinating career opportunities from a very talented group professionals who live in their community. The students were able to explore a wide variety of career fields ranging from medicine to military, finance to fashion, architecture to app design, and law to music production. The opening keynote speaker, Michael McLaren, the president MRM, a global digital and direct marketing agency, encouraged the students to find their passion and make it happen into a career. McLaren’s presentation included some very entertaining clips from several advertisements his firm created. After McLaren’s presentation, the students attended four small group discussions they had pre-selected which were lead mostly by MMS parents. One discussion on App Design, however, was lead by King Low Heywood junior and Darien resident Alex Britton who candidly spoke about his career which started when he was in 7th and 8th grade when he created his first app for the iPhone. Britton has gone on to develop many more highly successful apps as well as start Snap, a company that makes iPhone cases, and a clothing line called Money Never Sleeps. Tom Arrix, vice president for global marketing solutions at the New York office of Facebook, was the closing keynote speaker. Arrix’ presentation shared with the students Facebook’s philosophy to take chances in life and included a personal video message to Middlesex students from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg. Arrix also presented MMS principal, Dr. Debi Boccanfuso, with plaques to be displayed at the school to remind student of two of Facebook’s mantras: “Proceed and Be Bold” and “What Would You Do If You Were Not Afraid?”
