Sona Movsesian, Podcaster/writer/assistant

When New York Times Best Selling author Sona Movsesian chose Mt. SAC as her post-high school landing spot, she had no idea that she was making what she would later call the smartest choice she would ever make for her life. Like so many Mt. SAC students, Sona grew up in Southern California near Mt. SAC’s campus and found herself with no clear career path after high school. She wasn’t bothered by this, though. She has lived her whole life without a plan, and it has worked out well so far.

Growing up in a sheltered childhood with Armenian parents who immigrated from Turkey, the self-described “meek” Sona knew she wanted to go to college. Her high school grades couldn’t get her into her dream school, the University of Southern California, but she knew that they were just grades, not a reflection of her true potential. She picked Mt. SAC because her friends from high school were going there, and it felt like an extension of high school. What she got was so much more than what she expected. “I met my first out gay person,” she says proudly as a way to describe the way that Mt. SAC opened up her world as she met people from different backgrounds. On top of the social aspects, the academics came easily to Sona at Mt. SAC, and she eventually graduated with honors.

In keeping with her usual way of approaching situations without a set long term plan, she decided to make each semester at Mt. SAC different. After all, there is a lot of stuff at Mt. SAC to try. First, she tried acting and played a prostitute in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She didn’t take to acting as a craft, but she doesn’t consider the experience a waste. She enjoyed being in the play anyway. The next thing she tried was a game-changer.

Still striving to surprise herself, she picked the speech team, which she soon learned is often called forensics at the college level. This is where Sona met her people and found her place. From her mentor Liesel Reinhart to the other coaches and the lifelong friends she met on the team, forensics became a community that Sona has taken with her far beyond the Mt. SAC campus. Putting together speeches and practicing and performing them put Sona’s confidence through the ringer, but she came out stronger on the other side. The more she competed, the more she won, and the more she won, the more she liked it. “Speech is sort of like a sport but with your mouth,” she explains as a way of describing the commitment it requires. It was hard work, but she found it rewarding in a way she hadn’t previously experienced. To this day, being a national college speech champion is one of Sona’s proudest accomplishments and favorite stories to tell.

Like many Mt. SAC students, Sona wished that it was a four-year school, but after three successful years there, she transferred. This time she did get into USC. She was anxious to make the transition from Mt. SAC to the illustrious four-year campus of USC, but she needn’t have been concerned. She was prepared both academically and socially to be a junior at USC. She got a kick out of telling her classmates who had spent all four years at USC that she had the exact same diploma but only paid for two years at USC. For Sona, going to Mt. SAC was a smart choice not just academically, socially, and developmentally but also financially. That’s a message she wants to make sure current high school students hear: there should be no stigma attached to community college. Mt. SAC is a place to thrive.

The confidence Sona gleaned from the forensics team at Mt. SAC carried her through USC and on to a job as Conan O’Brien’s executive assistant, which inspired her best selling book, The World’s Worst Assistant. Being a Mt. SAC alumna is foundational to Sona’s identity. “I can’t pretend that I would be where I am without Mt. SAC. It’s hard for me to ignore it,” she says. These days, she is living with her husband and twin boys in Altadena, California and struggling to describe her career. She still identifies with being an assistant but says “podcaster/writer/assistant” in that order is probably the best way to represent her job right now. Her advice to incoming Mt. SAC students is simple: “try everything.” At Mt. SAC, that’s pretty easy advice to follow.