From Nizhnevartovsk to Beverly Hills: A Cross-Continental Journey

Growing up in the town of Nizhnevartovsk in central Russia, Sasha Tarasova, a graduate of the Master of Arts in Corporate Communication and a fan of American pop-culture, knew her future ambitions lay in the U.S. after her first visit to the country with her family.  

However, Tarasova understood from an early age that language skills and connections were important keys to making her move.

“I'm from a small oil and gas town, so I always knew I would never live there,” said Tarasova. “I was lucky enough to travel a lot with my family and go to Europe and Asia. When I was 13, I started traveling abroad by myself, going to summer camps in England. Once I figured out that there is more that life has to offer, I studied English and then I picked up Spanish later on—eventually figuring out that I wanted to move out for school and college.”

Using the skills from the Corporate Communication program and a lifetime of fostering connections, 26-year-old Tarasova is able to travel the world, occupy the settings of her favorite shows and movies, and excel as Head of Sales at Jack Weir and Sons in Beverly Hills, California, connecting with clients from around the world and matching them with vintage jewelry. 

Making Moves

Now established in her career and thriving, Tarasova is able to reflect on the disciplined foundation her parents laid early in life. 

“My parents wanted their children to excel in whatever we did, and as the firstborn, I had all of their expectations on me,” said Tarasova. “So I had an [English] tutor come to my house three times a week and we were training very rigorously.”

As the family’s most fluent English speaker, Tarasova was often tasked with communicating with English speakers in town and abroad, allowing her to begin establishing her intercommunication skills at an early age.

“In my hometown, because of the oil industry, we had a few American and Canadian companies. It was a very normal situation where I was having dinner with my father or my family, and there was an English speaking person sitting at the bar, and my dad would force me to talk to them,” said Tarasova. “I built a tough skin early on. I didn't have any shame approaching people and introducing myself.”

Several years later, Tarasova became interested in leaving her small town to attend EF Academy, a boarding school in New York that offered her the opportunity to connect with other international students from all over the world.

“My family has always been very supportive of my ambitions, and when possible they would apply resources that were necessary to make things happen,” said Tarasova. “I brought up [moving to New York] when I was 13, and they told me to wait a few years until I was more mature, so I was good all year so they would let me go.”

Upon landing in the States, 15-year-old Tarasova immediately began acclimating to the culture, taking in the sights and sounds of New York and consuming American media—starting with reading “The Hunger Games”, her first full-length book in English. 

“I was excited to have my American dream come true,” said Tarasova. “I was a huge fan of “Gossip Girl” at the time, so I got to live through my “Gossip Girl” fantasy—sitting on the stairs of the Met, having Magnolia Bakery pudding, all those cool things. Going to a private boarding school felt surreal.”

In addition to immersing herself in American culture, Tarasova took the opportunity to bond with her classmates, fueling her interest in communicating and connecting with people from diverse backgrounds. 

“I've always been very eager to connect people from various cultures. At this specific school, there were no American students, so it was just a bunch of foreigners from all over the world,” said Tarasova.

After spending a year at the academy, Tarasova moved to Seattle, Washington.

“The Pacific Northwest was incredible. I was living my “Twilight” dreams. For every stage of my life, there is a show or a movie associated with it,” said Tarasova.

It was in Seattle that she more concretely combined her interests in culture, connection and communication, starting a successful YouTube channel about her travels and studying abroad.

“The channel had around 70,000 followers by the time I stopped, but through that I was able to get internship and job opportunities,” said Tarasova. “That's also how I began my career in social media marketing that eventually evolved into what I do now.”

While she was busy running her YouTube channel and earning her high school diploma, Tarasova was concurrently enrolled in post-secondary coursework at Green River College in Auburn, Washington.

Beverly Hills 90210

During the next leg of her whirlwind academic and cinematic journey, Tarasova landed in California after graduating high school. She attended El Camino College in Alondra Park, California before transferring to Cal State Northridge in Los Angeles, California and obtaining her BA in Communication Studies. 

Throughout her studies, Tarasova began thinking more seriously about the next stage in her career, taking particular interest in interpersonal and organizational communication. At the encouragement of her employer, Jack Weir and Sons, Tarasova was emboldened to further her education in the subject that had garnered her interest during her undergraduate studies.

“I remember one of my senior level classes in undergrad was organizational communication and I loved it so much. I thought, ‘Why did I not study this until my last semester of my senior year?’” said Tarasova. “I started digging to see if there was more to that discipline, which is how I stumbled across corporate communication. Then I just started doing research on what schools offer that program and there weren't that many.”

Finding that her local higher education institutions would not allow her to work full time while obtaining her master’s, Tarasova eventually discovered the Master of Arts in Corporate Communication program at the University of Colorado Boulder—a program that offered her area of interest and the flexibility she was seeking. 

Tarasova quickly found that the program encompassed material that would prove useful throughout the next stages of her career. 

“I'm obsessed with this subject. It's one of the most useful things people could study,” said Tarasova. “You need to know how to speak, how to present yourself, how to negotiate and how to have hard conversations in whatever you do. Since I ended up in sales and marketing, there’s lots of negotiating and strategy. So the program has been helpful.”

Now, more than a year after graduating the master’s program, Tarasova is still putting her program-learned skills to use.

“I've played a key role in growing Jack Weir and Sons as an organization. I started out doing our social media, but I've grown into the Director of Sales and Marketing and now the Head of Sales,” said Tarasova. “A lot of the things I've learned in the Corporate Communication program I've pioneered here at work—now we have onboarding processes, risk management solutions and processes for adapting campaigns to different cultures.”

While Tarasova has no immediate plans to leave her current role, her long-term goal is to teach and continue fostering connections with others.

“A few professors [from the Corporate Communication program] have been influential and they inspired me by how they had a corporate background and then started consulting and teaching. That's what I want to do eventually when I'm ready to take a slower pace and finish the corporate game. I've always been passionate about different cultures, so I want to teach intercultural, interpersonal and maybe organizational communication as well,” said Tarasova.

Tarasova’s journey in the U.S. may have started with “Gossip Girl” and “The Hunger Games”, but the next chapter of her story is still being written—one driven by curiosity, culture and connection. One thing is for certain though—the credits are nowhere near rolling.