By Heream Yang
Thomas Desrosiers
Thomas Desrosiers (MMark’21) picked up the clarinet for the first time in middle school and soon became immersed in a world of all-county, all-state, and international competitions. Desrosiers followed his love of music to Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, where he continued playing the clarinet. However, as he became familiar with the world of professional music, he realized that he did not want to pursue a career in it and began exploring other opportunities. Desrosiers took up a business minor and began experimenting with his long-held interest in electrical engineering at the Wond’ry, Vanderbilt’s Center for Innovation and Design. The Wond’ry’s electronics lab soon became a second home for Desrosiers, where he grew his interest in the tech industry under the mentorship of Executive Director and Vanderbilt Business Professor David Owens.
As he neared graduation, Desrosiers decided to apply for Vanderbilt’s Master of Marketing (MMark) program. His experience taking marketing classes from Vanderbilt Business professors for his business minor confirmed that the MMark program would provide the foundation he needed to pursue a tech career. “I started getting involved with marketing, and Professor Kelly Haws is one of the reasons why I really enjoyed it,” Desrosiers said. “I spoke with a couple of mentors, and they pointed out that I like technical stuff just as much as creative stuff, so marketing presents a good balance of those 2 areas.”
Desrosiers successfully secured a full-time position at Google, where he will be working as a Cloud Technical Resident. The Cloud Technical Residency is a one-year rotational program that provides a versatile introduction to the technical and client-facing business aspects of Google Cloud. Desrosiers looks forward to making a positive impact at one of the world’s most influential tech companies. “A lot of my drive for being involved in technology is creating products that are good for the world,” Desrosiers explained. “Google created Drive and Google Docs, Google Sheets, all of that, specifically so that accessibility to software that’s crucial for career development is available for all people. I’m really looking forward to this very progressive ‘how can we make the world a better place’ attitude.”
Click through the timeline below to find out how Desrosiers landed his offer.
