Korey Pereira walked onto UT Austin’s campus as a music major with his sights set on the recording industry. Interning with what was once Burnt Orange Productions, he had the chance to work on his first feature film. He was immediately enamored and promptly transferred into the radio-television-film department at Moody College. 

“You come here because UT is a good school, but then you quickly realize that there are people that are not just good at what you want to do but everything else you can imagine,” Pereira said. “It breeds this unique opportunity to bridge disciplines or find connections that could lead you in a different direction than you were going.”

Once he transferred, Pereira made his own path, learning all the pieces that go into making a movie. Along the way, he found his niche in sound editing — a high-demand position where he could combine his interest in music and technology.

After graduation, Pereira stayed in Austin and started climbing the ladder. Local projects turned into work with larger teams out of Los Angeles, which turned into time working on Richard Linklater films such as “Boyhood” and working with Austin film icon Robert Rodriguez.

“As a student of film, you grow up seeing Rodriguez evolve as an Austin filmmaker,” Pereira said. “Getting to be a part of his journey, even in a small part, was another big, monumental moment for me.”

The connections Pereira made eventually led him to the set of the Netflix phenomenon “Stranger Things.” He picked up the phone one day to find someone on the other end asking if he would be available to work on season four and started a few days later.

“You kind of get thrown into this universe that’s really bigger than life,” Pereira said “I remember going out to LA and attending the Mixed Sound for Film event a few years back and sitting in the audience, hearing the crew of ‘Stranger Things’ talk about their work and thinking about how cool it would be to work on something like that. I couldn’t really fathom that a few years later, I’d actually be working with those people on the next season.”

In 2022, Pereira won an Emmy for his work as sound editor on “Stranger Things.”

“It’s kind of a whirlwind moment where you’re like, ‘Oh wow, this is actually happening,’” Pereira said.

Since then, he has worked as a dialogue editor for three seasons of “Law & Order,” a show he grew up watching with his grandparents. But even with all the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, he couldn’t stay away from UT and returned to teach in 2018. Pereira said he feels like he never really left. While in college, he always felt a pull to teach, wanting to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a professor. Eventually, one of his former teachers, Andy Garrison, asked him to take over a post-sound class for him. A few years later, Garrison retired, and Pereira took over his post as audio area head.

“My goal here as the audio area head is to take my experience as a student at UT and out in the world as a professional and give the next generation of students and professionals a shortcut,” Pereira said. “Having a chance to reflect on where I started to where I am now, I want to give students a head start on their careers with what I wish I would have known as a student.”

Being back at Moody feels right to Pereira, especially because he believes the work the college is doing is more exciting than ever. With a faculty roster stacked with industry professionals, recent accolades such as being named one of the top 10 film schools in the country and expanded opportunities in sound, Pereira is enjoying the chance to come back and play a bigger role in the school.

“It’s fun to be in the same halls, but to me, there’s a different energy,” Pereira said. “I think the work we’re doing is more exciting than ever.”

One of his favorite parts of his job has been talking to the beginner communications class that every Moody student is required to take. He enjoys giving young hopefuls in the industry a boost and helping them see that it’s possible to achieve what they want to do in the future.

“I’d say that that enthusiasm is contagious,” Pereira said. “I think you need to go into every day being excited about what you’re doing, that even if what you’re working on today isn’t your dream job, you need to do the work and show that you can excel at what you’re doing now because that’s how you’re going to get the next opportunity.”

Out of all his awards, Emmy included, Pereira said that winning the Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award is incredibly special, especially considering his long history with UT.

“I feel like I attribute a lot of my success to the connections I made while I was at UT,” Pereira said. “The success matters that much more when you can see how it benefits the university.”

Growing up, McGehee believed that getting to attend The University of Texas at Austin was the pinnacle of success. When she was 7, she would wait on the dial-up internet to load the UT website and then print out pictures and information about the university, storing them in a three-ring binder to flip through and dream about.

When she came to UT as the first in her family to graduate high school — much less go to college — she set daunting, extraordinary goals for herself, determined to advance her family's legacy.

McGehee began as a chemistry pre-med major but found herself spending most of her free time volunteering at the University’s TV news station. She worked closely with journalism majors and discovered a deep love of storytelling.

After a conversation with the Moody College dean and a less-than-stellar grade in organic chemistry, she decided to transfer.

“It really is where everything changed for me,” McGehee said. “I woke up excited to go to class. I would wait up for the course schedules to drop and then register immediately because I was so excited to get all of the electives that I wanted.”

As a journalism major, McGehee fell in love with bringing people’s experiences to life with words and pictures.

“Being at UT really set me free to explore who I am and who I want to be,” Jessica said. “That’s what going here gave me. It gave me the freedom to pivot and write my own story.”

After graduating, the ideas for new stories began keeping her up at night. She started typing out fragments of scenes that came to her until, eventually, she had to get it all out. She sat down at her computer, with no concept of scene structures or literary writing devices and wrote the first draft of her debut novel in 30 days.

In 2018, McGehee put her story out into the world by entering #DVpit — an annual pitch contest on X, formerly known as Twitter — that helps unrepresented marginalized authors find an entry into the world of publishing. McGehee’s pitch went viral, and publishers reached out to her wanting to hear more.

“I couldn’t sleep that night,” McGehee said.

McGehee’s tweet was just the beginning to getting her story out into the world. After finding a literary agent, she sent her manuscript to dozens of publishers and received countless rejections in the following 48 hours.

Finally, after weeks of disappointing emails from Scholastic, Penguin, HarperCollins and other industry giants, McGehee sold her debut novel, “Wings of Ebony,” in a six-figure duology deal with Simon and Schuster, a big five publisher in New York.

“I feel like anything that’s worth doing, if you’re scared, that’s part of it,” she said. “Because then you’re really pushing yourself. You’re challenging yourself to overcome something that is daunting, and I think that on the other side of that is where the real reward is.”

Since then, McGehee has written “Against the Tide,” a prequel to “The Little Mermaid” live-action film for Disney that follows Ariel and her sisters. McGehee said that when she got the email asking her to write the book, she thought her agent was playing a prank on her.

Eventually, McGehee decided to dive into the world of romantic fantasy, a departure from her debut novel, which focused on social justice in an urban fantasy setting inspired by her hometown. She almost felt she needed permission to write something that was not social-justice-related, to step away from the brand she had initially built for herself.

“I realized that I deserve to write whatever I want to write,” McGehee said. “That’s the essence of being free in the publishing industry, getting the opportunity to tell whatever story you want to tell.”

"House of Marionne” became an instant hit, selling for nearly seven figures. Besides fulfilling a personal goal for McGehee, the book also helped fill in the gaps of young adult romantic fantasy written by authors of color.

“I’m seeing a lot more authors of colors writing romantic fantasy,” McGehee said. “I don’t know if it had anything to do with me, but I am grateful that I see it.”

McGehee said her time at Moody College was instrumental in preparing her for a career as an author. 

“I had no formal creative writing training other than my journalism education, which is all about how you hook someone with a pitch, how you get a lot across in a few words,” McGehee said. “That’s essentially what you’re trying to do in the beginning of a book, to convince a reader to keep turning and turning pages.”

More important than teaching her how to catch and hold a reader’s attention, life at Moody set her love of storytelling on fire and gave her the time and space to nurture it.

“It was really cathartic to be in an environment where creativity was valued and prioritized and talked about as a talent,” McGehee said. “I had to kind of give myself permission to be creative, and in Moody, what I see is a respect and value on all different types of skill sets and talents.”

Winning the Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award came as a shock to McGehee, but being recognized by UT among so many incredible alumni feels incredibly validating to her.

“I hold my university, obviously, in so much respect,” McGehee said. “It is truly an honor.”