When Tyler Mullins (Class of 2014) was growing up outside Butcher Holler in Johnson County, he had no dreams of eventually working for one of the world’s largest social media companies as a user researcher for Twitter’s human systems. He didn’t have a social media account when he attended high school, but that was the least of his struggles.
“(I) didn’t have a car in high school or a job. I didn’t have internet,” he said. “It was very challenging to do after school activities or participate in clubs or groups to build skills or build my resume for college.”
While Mullins didn’t have as many opportunities as some of his classmates, he saw college as a stepping stone to something better and decided to become an MSU Eagle.
“I grew up dirt poor and MSU was an affordable college,” he said. “I think I saw it as a starting point for what might be different in the future. It was the only option I had other than work.”
Mullins knew he wanted to go to college, but it took him time to find a major where his creative passions and practical career goals came together. He originally came to MSU for music before studying art and later computer science. He was changing his major as often as he worked to pay for his college education, but his interest in philosophy was one of the constants of his college experience.
“I always looked forward to my classes. It was the material I was most interested in,” Mullins said. “The faculty served as the best mentors I had. They were the most empathetic, the most willing to listen, but they would also challenge me. They would touch me and push me and understand how my mind works so I could grow in ways different. ”
While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, Mullins decided to major in philosophy and convergent media, a program where “the creative side and the technical side came together in a more commodified way.” In addition to working as a documentary editor at Morehead’s St. , 2009).
“I changed my major and I had an opportunity and I was able to take it to get the credits that I needed and the work experience that I needed,” he said. “When I actually worked for a client on campus, they said, ‘that’s great.’ I was like, ‘I could do that.'”
“Students like Tyler are the reason we work in higher education, and that’s why I strongly advocate for education — it’s changing lives,” Hobbs said. “As a fellow Appalachian, it’s not always easy to realize our potential to positively impact our region and beyond. I couldn’t be more proud of this Eagle.”
After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Convergent Media and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 2014, Mullins took his first job as an AmeriCorps service member before moving to Louisville to work for Next Step Network as an assistant in marketing and communications from 2016 to 2018. While he had his reasons for not pursuing a computer science degree at MSU (“Calculus is not for me,” he said), that knowledge, his convergent classes in media and his learning to code with the help of the Code Louisville training program helped him land his next job at Humana in 2018. He worked as a software engineer before taking on the roles of senior employee experience designer and strategist of the experience of senior employees.
“I would say a lot of the art and design skills and media skills were still useful,” he said.
His role in ensuring Humana employees had optimal internal communication online, often referred to in human relations as “internal face-to-face projects,” gave him the experience he needed as he came across an interesting job opening. on Twitter. Although he felt he was suited for the job with his skills, he tried not to get his hopes up too high.
“The position I was applying for was out of my league. I was punching above my weight, I loved it. It was very aspirational,” Mullins said. “I got a piece of advice earlier…’You miss 100% of the shots you don’t make’. I went for it, and … here I am.”
Working remotely from Louisville since March 2022, Mullins researches and coordinates ways to make Twitter employees’ digital experiences as useful and stress-free as possible within the company. Ever since he was a child, he has always wanted to impact people’s lives in a positive way. His position at Twitter has not only been a huge career milestone, but it has also allowed him to help people in a fulfilling and unexpected way.
“I call it the snowball effect. You start with small, incremental changes to one part of the experience…and it starts to build as it goes,” Mullins said. “By the time it gets to the customer level, it’s a lot bigger than it started. It makes it easier for them to do their jobs and do better quality work, and we’re all happier.”
Mullins said he owes much of his current success to his decision to attend college at MSU. There he found a way out of the poverty of his childhood. It was a place to explore his early interests and discover new ones. It was where Mullins, who grew up “extremely queer” in Eastern Kentucky, was able to embrace his LGBTQ identity in an atmosphere where he felt safe and included. More than anything, Mullins said a college education gave Mullins a place to propel him toward a promising future.
“College was like a set of doors. Every door is an opportunity, and it was a set of doors that weren’t available to me at home,” he said. “It definitely opens doors that you don’t know are there and those roads lead to other opportunities that are hard to predict or are hard to see.”
For more information on the philosophy program at MSU, visit www.moreheadstate.edu/study/philosophy or contact the Department of History, Philosophy, Politics, Global Studies, and Legal Studies at [email protected] or 606-783-2655.
To learn more about MSU’s convergent media program, visit www.moreheadstate.edu/study/communication or contact the Department of Communication, Media and Languages at [email protected] or 606-783-2134.
College can change lives and communities. Higher education increases tax revenue, lowers unemployment, and even improves health outcomes. Learn more from the KY Council on Postsecondary Education at kyhigheredmatters.org.
