Lauren Feldman '98 | A Career Change for the Better

Indiana University - Bachelor of Arts, Fashion Design, Liberal Arts, and Management

Service Manager and Director of Private Events, L’Artusi, New York City

 

While Lauren Feldman was in the midst of settling on a career after graduating from college, she took strength from a value instilled at Sonoma Country Day School. “I knew that my teachers always wanted me to be something great,” she said. “But they never meant that to be making a lot of money or having a lot of power. They wanted us to be happy and healthy, and to find a career that could allow us to be constantly growing and striving for that happiness.”

 

So, when Lauren moved to the food and beverage industry after working in the fashion design industry, she didn’t feel she had failed; she felt she had experienced a breakthrough. “I think SCDS made me strong enough to turn my back on being a fashion designer when I realized it wasn’t for me,” she said.

 

Lauren now is the service manager and director of private events at L’Artusi, a popular Italian restaurant in the West Village in Manhattan. Now that she’s thriving in her new career, Lauren thinks she was always meant to be in the hospitality field, influenced as she was by the environment of Sonoma County and SCDS’s emphasis on utilizing each day to its fullest.

 

“My living is to ensure that people have a good time while enjoying outstanding food paired with delicious wine, while being surrounded by friends. There is little in life that is more satisfying than that!” she said. “I feel good when I have been able to turn what might have been a horrible, stressful day for a guest into something relaxed and enjoyable.”

 

Lauren moved to New York City in February 2007 intent on becoming a designer after graduating from Indiana University in the winter of 2007. She had completed an individualized major program for fashion design, liberal arts, and management offered through Indiana’s College of Liberal Arts and Kelly School of Business. She immediately found an internship in the industry and eventually became an assistant stylist, but found that her life was hardly the dream she had imagined. “I was meeting many famous people and attending glamorous parties, but I was constantly working. I couldn’t even enjoy life in this wonderful city.”

 

Furthermore, the values of the fashion industry conflicted were her personal values.  “Everyone around me was having heart attacks about whether a skirt would get to a photo shoot location. I just couldn’t see what good the industry was doing for the world.”

 

As luck would have it, a fellow SCDS alumna, Dana Goeglein ’98, was instrumental in Lauren’s career change. She and Dana have been best friends since they met in third grade. Dana referred Lauren to another college friend who had started a new Italian restaurant in the city. Ater Lauren began working at the restaurant, she had settled on a career the enabled her to live her dream. “In the food and beverage industry—as silly as it sounds—you impact people, one life at a time, one day at a time. It makes life worthwhile when you are doing something that you actually subscribe to!”