Jonny Almario

Jonny’s career path as a skilled creative has combined with his Sociology, Japanese, and Psychology studies to take him into strategic marketing.

I studied Japanese in high school and enjoyed it, but after transferring from an international school to a university I wanted to broaden my studies and gravitated towards the humanities. At the time I thought Sociology and Psychology would complement each other well. During my undergraduate years, Sociology was the biggest surprise and quickly became my favourite subject and I stuck with it as my major subject along with Psychology and Japanese. I enjoyed everything the courses had to offer: lectures, course materials, assignments, and most of all, the lecturers’ teaching styles. I was drawn to the study of microsociology, which focuses on individual actions and thinking within groups, and even to this day this influences my professional work.

I’ve had an enjoyable and creative career path. During my final year of study, I started bartending and I was so good at it that it became my first career. For almost eight years I focussed on cocktail bartending and taking part in cocktail competitions.

It wasn't until 2018 after completing my Master of Dance Studies (Research) at the University of Auckland, that I started my second career in Market Research. I didn't even know that industry existed when I first graduated as I had been fully intent on becoming a respected bartender and eventually opening my own bar.  Now the thinking, creativity, precision, and performance skills from those career paths are coming together.

In my current role, I future-proof brands by helping my clients understand and navigate the wider cultural context in which they operate. In many ways, it is about helping clients break categorical and industry biases that can hold or limit their thinking. I do this by illuminating the current and future global macro and micro forces impacting their work.

Do not let your field of study restrict or dictate your career path. Understand what your transferrable skills are and try to talk to many people doing what you want to do in the future to better understand how you can adapt your current skillset to match your career goal (or at least show potential).

Studying Sociology has had the largest impact on me in terms of how I view the world and carry out my strategic work. Reflecting on my current career and understanding the structural forces at play in the world from my Sociology and language studies has helped lay the foundation for my cultural strategy work to acknowledge and appreciate diverse cultural points of view. They also helped me develop lateral thinking, which is a key skill I use daily!