Miyu Sumimoto

2022 Graduate

Majors: Public Relations, Strategic Communicaiton, Marketing

My name is Miyu Sumimoto and I earned a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations and Strategic Communication through the College of Liberal Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing through the Krannert School of Management. I’m from Laguna Niguel, California, which is a small suburb around an hour from Los Angeles in Orange County.

I decided to first do communication because I knew that I loved writing, and I wasn’t too bad at it. Then I decided to concentrate on more of the business aspect of it because I enjoyed communication as much as I did in my economics courses at Purdue. 

Being a CLA student is amazing. As it is one of the smaller colleges on this campus, the community is tight-knit and creates a more personable environment that correlates with the student-to-faculty ratio, which I enjoy very much. In one of my communication classes, me and a couple of other students were invited to our professors' house to enjoy a meal with their family and talk about personal experiences outside of the classroom!  

Outside of being an ambassador, I’m the committee head of marketing for the Alpha Kappa Psi Business Professional Fraternity, director of communications on Purdue Student Government, a Purdue University residence tour guide, and a barista at Starbucks, so I would say I’m a little involved on campus. 

Although I’ve never been on a study abroad trip, the summer of my freshman year I had the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. with around 20 other people. I was selected as a student to observe and study for two weeks the fluidity of C-SPAN, which is the famous political cable network founded by the wonderful Brian Lamb, the namesake of our School of Communication here at Purdue. This is called a “Maymester" program, where Purdue offers students a hands-on experience, as well as course credit in just two weeks!

At the Capitol of our country, I networked so much that my mouth and ears were about to fall off from the amount of conversations that I had in such a short period of time. I talked with politicians and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, visited museums, the Supreme Court, Capitol Hill, and so much more. I also met the Vice President of the United States and shook his hand. And died on the spot. All I could imagine was myself working within this profession and breathtaking city in the near future. 

I also did a paid internship my freshman year at an NPR member station as a general reporter and marketing intern. The experience was amazing. I would have never imagined being able to get an internship as an underclassman, or as a freshman, but I got it because my professor in the College of Liberal Arts guided me and recommended me. I cannot thank this college enough. All of my friends in different colleges were jealous that I was able to pursue my passion with hands-on work through an internship. 

For prospective students, my advice is if you are even mildly interested in something, grasp it. Don’t let it go. The amount of organizations, clubs, and majors that we offer is unexplainable. The relationships you make right now, at this moment, is life-long. Don’t let that opportunity go. Add on a major. Or two. Or three! The spectrum is wide, and it is up to you if you want to dive deeper into the unknown and feed onto your curiosity.