From her roots in the small town of St. Albans, Julia Remillard (‘18) has followed her dreams to New York City.

The Mercury got in contact with this dream-chasing BFA alumni and asked her some questions, including what her favorite memories from BFA are. 

“For me, my English classes and Poetry Out Loud were definitely some major highlights of my time [at BFA],” Remillard said. 

Remillard was BFA’s Poetry Out Loud champion in 2018.

According to Remillard, her dream of living in NYC and being a writer started even before high school. Although she wasn’t entirely sure what her career would be coming out of high school, Remillard attended Long Island University Brooklyn and earned an English B.A. degree with an acting minor. Her dream job was to work for Cosmopolitan and write her own work.

Now, Remillard is working for the New York Post as a Social Media Marketing Manager. When asked what it was like landing this job, Remillard said she “had a really tough time with applying for jobs and handling the discouragement [she] felt over being rejected for all the positions [she] longed for.”

“It took faith and patience to land my role now at the New York Post,” she said. 

Remillard claimed that being a marketing manager was not at all the job she expected it to be.

“It was not the route I thought my career would take me back in high school and even college,” she said.

However, she said she is “very fortunate for the role and the amount of freedom and exploration it offers [her].” 

According to Remillard, “On average, half of my day consists of helping out on the main social media team by posting to all social platforms. The other half of my day consists of meetings with coworkers and outside brands to set up merchandise collaboration for our online store, finding new ways to promote our podcasts and commerce across socials, creating content, researching shopping trends and overall just constantly discovering new days to package our various content to bring people to our pages:  New York Post and Page Six.”

Remillard would give BFA students three pieces of advice: 

 “Believe in yourself fiercely. Many people doubted me, I felt, in high school for the size of my aspirations, but what I know now is that being your biggest fan will always pay off in the long run. Your dreams are never too big.”

“Be open to things changing… I soon realized that sometimes the way to dreams is through new dreams.”

“Be gentle with yourself…Take self-care seriously and allow yourself to slow down; it truly is not a race. Not every opportunity will come easy but, at the end of the day, compassion for your journey is so important.”

Finally, Remillard said, “For anyone who has big dreams outside of St. Albans or even Vermont, just know you can have it, it’s not impossible at all. One of my favorite movies says it best, ‘Life is short, the world is wide, I wanna make some memories’”- Mamma Mia.