Short Feature with Women's Basketball Rising Junior Makayla Filiere

Rising junior Makayla Filiere, a business major from Chandler, Arizona, answers a few questions about student life at Carnegie Mellon, her internship and summer plans, why she chose her major, and what she likes about Pittsburgh.

1. What do you enjoy about campus life?

I really enjoy the diversity within the campus, as everyone is so unique in their own way and it introduces me to different cultures and perspectives that I would have never thought to explore. 

2. What do you get involved in outside of basketball?

I am heavily involved in community service, so I was inducted last year into Lambda Sigma national honors society where we did 15 hours of community service a semester, I was a site leader for 1000Plus last semester, and I am on the planning committee for Special Olympics that CMU hosts every year, so I help to plan and run the basketball event. Additionally, I am a member of SAAC and am going to be a Resident Assistant in Donner House this upcoming year.

3. What are your summer plans?

This summer I am studying abroad in Sydney, Australia.  I am taking a Visual Communications class with the major project being we design and pitch our own logo for an Australian bank.  I am also interning for the Sydney Blue Sox professional baseball team, where I am an operations assistant that assists with compiling data into Excel and analyzing the potential for growth as well as logistics coordination.

4. Talk about your internship experience.

This summer I am working as an operations intern for the Sydney Blue Sox professional baseball team in Sydney, Australia.  I did a wide variety of tasks, with the main projects involving compiling tickets, memberships, scouting of top batters and social media demographics into Excel charts and graphs to analyze the progression over the weeks and years to see what is popular versus not popular, as well as where to target potential fans.  I also did some marketing tasks such as pitching events the company could hold in the off-season to keep interests high and posting to social media sites about upcoming events.

5. What are you excited about next semester?

I am extremely excited to be a Resident Assistant next year in Donner.  I can't wait to help the freshman have a smooth transition into college and serve as a role model for my floor!  I am also very excited to dive into my statistics double major, as I start the core of my statistics classes next semester.  

6. Why did you select your course of study?

I selected business because I am interested in owning my own non-profit one day and I decided to double major in statistics because I am also interested in sports analytics.  One of my favorite classes but also one of the most challenging courses was 15-110 Principles of Computing, because the coding you can execute was so neat to me.

7. What class would you recommended as a MUST TAKE class at CMU?

I would recommend someone to take either 15-110 or 15-112 because CMU is such an elite computer science school, you have to take advantage of your resources and experience it!

8. What have you enjoyed about living in Pittsburgh?

I really enjoy the Thai food in Pittsburgh. Being from Arizona, I had never really had any good Thai food before but since coming to Pittsburgh I absolutely love it!

9. What has been a memorable moment so far on the team?

One of my most memorable moments so far being on the team was hosting and winning the ECAC tournament my freshman year.  It was neat to be able to host the tournament and then win it on our home court.