As president of the Annenberg School for Communication Masters Association, Allan Baclayon made it a major goal to build relationships with students at USC’s other schools.

“It’s just how it works,” says Baclayon, who is working on his master’s degree in communication management. “People in the business and medical and engineering schools will be working with the people coming out of our program.”

With graduation pending, Baclayon has carried that mindset over to a business venture called Prapta, an online start-up where he serves as communications director. The website uses cutting-edge technology to encourage people to live an active lifestyle. Users come to the site to develop and complete a 'life list” of all the goals they want to accomplish in life, from running a marathon to seeing the Eiffel Tower.

“I was able to go to the group and say I brought certain skills to the table,” Baclayon says. “Those skills were the ones I was learning in class. I wrote the business plan, their communications, investor relations, different phrases we’re putting on index of the page. It’s my goal to reach out to people and bring them into what we’re doing.”

He credits the communication management program with giving him talents transferable to the “real world.”

“It is heavily project-based – virtually every class has major projects,” he says. “They try to make it as applicable and real world to you as possible. I couldn’t ask for a better situation. That’s what a master’s program should be, and that’s what students get in communication management. To me, that was my major goal, to work on projects I could really use after graduation.”

Find out more about the Masters in Communication Management