By Adriana DiFranco
When Emma Jennings ’03 was nearing her graduation day at Duke, she noticed her friends following four distinct career paths.
“Consultant, investment banker, pre-law or pre-med,” she said. “And that was it.”
But for a Blue Devil pursuing a career in a creative industry—Jennings now works as a content director at Google—the Duke alumna says she wished she had benefitted from the support of a community like Duke Entertainment, Media, and Arts Network (DEMAN), an industry group for creatives that formed several years after Jennings graduated.
That kind of supportive, connected community was the focus of DEMAN Weekend 2025, Nov. 6-8, on Duke’s campus. Now in its twelfth year, the event brings together alumni and students interested in creative industries for shared learning, teaching and networking.
With more than 350 alumni and students registered and more than 50 alumni speakers, participants attended workshops and panels on themes ranging from preparing for a Broadway audition to how to break into podcasting.
The message Simon Shore ’20, a DEMAN panelist and a partner manager at YouTube, hopes attendees took away?
“The Duke network is incredibly strong,” he said. “Alumni want to help you.”
Susan Gordon, assistant vice president of Alumni and Student Connections at Duke, said she couldn’t agree more.
“Again and again throughout the weekend, students and alums would stop me to share how DEMAN gave them a sense of community, belonging, and optimism for the future, and how thankful they were to Duke for making it possible,” Gordon said.
The growth of DEMAN since its first alumni-student weekend in 2009 illustrates the steady rise of an arts culture at Duke. Fueled by targeted investments in faculty, programs and facilities—including the opening of the Rubenstein Arts Center in 2018—creative culture at Duke has only expanded.
Mary Kate Little ’19, a DEMAN speaker who founded a boutique social media and content agency called Supper Club Creative, said that the entrepreneurial spirit and the willingness to take risks is something that she learned at Duke, propelling her from curating art with her art history degree to curating digital content.
“The best asset you have is your curiosity,” she advised Duke students.
Alumni speakers represented companies including YouTube, Google, United Talent Agency, CBS, Paramount, Major League Baseball, Amazon, The Washington Post and more. This year’s DEMAN focused keenly on the “creator economy” fueled by social media influencers and content strategists. Once thought of as niche marketing, this rapidly-growing industry is now a $250 billion global force reshaping how brands build loyalty, drive engagement and grow their businesses.
Zackery Huang, a first-year student from Austin, Texas, attended DEMAN Weekend for the first time. In between his studies, Huang works as a part-time Roblox game developer. He says he has his sights on working game development as a future career.
“I’ve met and talked with a lot of great people here,” Huang said. “It helps to meet like-minded individuals.”
Finding one’s creative career path and thriving is even more reason to be part of DEMAN Weekend said Deborah F. Rutter, Duke’s newly appointed vice provost for the arts, who offered a keynote address during the event, and demonstrates Duke’s tradition of alumni teaching students and fellow alumni.
“The commitment that alums have for this school and giving back to the students is extraordinary,” she said.
In addition to the recent weekend on campus, Duke provides DEMAN programming throughout the year, including on-campus networking events, alumni talks, film screenings and alumni programming in key cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London and more.