To date, UTNY has served more than 500 students. Isenberg sees the five-year anniversary as a major milestone, especially considering it started only a semester before the pandemic.

“We are really expanding our footprint in this wonderful city, and it’s exciting to see,” Isenberg said. “The fifth anniversary is a huge cause for celebration.”

UTNY’s sixth year will promise even greater growth with new projects in the works, including the Pathway Program, which will launch in Fall 2025. The program allows first year Moody College students to start their UT journey in New York, taking a smaller courseload and networking with fellow Longhorns in New York before returning to Austin for the spring semester.

Isenberg, who took over as executive director of UTNY in 2023, has made it a priority to give even more students the opportunity to study in the city, regardless of financial background. 

“I want to overcome that barrier of entry,” Isenberg said. “I think we’ve been making some really good strides. We are looking to build a number of endowed scholarships and other forms of grants and financial support that will offset the cost for students in need.”

As UTNY rounds out its fifth year, Isenberg sees the tangible impact the program is making on the city itself. The New York chapter of the Texas Exes is the biggest outside of the Lonestar state, and more high school students in the tri state area are wanting to apply to UT. All of this, he said, is due to UT students making their mark on the city.

“This is not the faculty,” Isenberg said. “This is the students. It’s their reputation, and that’s what is really helping to expand our footprint here and elevate our profile.”

We spoke to several UTNY alumni about their experience in the program.

Here’s what they had to say.

When Laura Laughead started as a journalism major at Moody College, UTNY didn’t exist. One day as an upperclassman, she started chatting with Kathleen McElroy, a professor in the School of Journalism and Media, in the line at Cappy’s Café, on campus. After discussing internships, McElroy told Laughead she would be the perfect fit for the newly launched UTNY program.

“The more I learned about it, the more I thought how cool this was going to be and how fortuitous the timing was,” Laughead said. “It seemed so aligned with what my internship goals were. All the cards fell into place.”

After being accepted into the very first UTNY cohort, Laughead was able to land her dream internship at Good Morning America. Because the program was brand new, she and other students weren’t able to rely as heavily on network connections to score internships, but the coordinators helped broker contracts and navigate them through the process.

“It was intimidating but also extremely exciting to be a part of something so new because we got to forge our own paths,” Laughead said. “We got to really see the construction from the ground up and have our input be valued more because they really wanted us to tell them what worked.”

Laughead said that working at Good Morning America is still one of the highlights of her career, though interning full time while getting used to the city was a baptism by fire. She had to get stronger, smarter and more worldly fast.

“Being a part of UTNY definitely made that experience so much better because it was such a security blanket,” Laughead said. “Having a bunch of students from back home in the same boat as you is very encouraging. You can commiserate about the commute or how weird New York is in this way. Even if you weren’t best friends, it just was great to see familiar faces.”

After graduating in 2020 and leaving New York, Laughead went from small U.S. town to small U.S. town working for smaller news organizations before working her way up to her own show on Austin PBS. She said UTNY helped her learn how to grow in these different environments.

“I felt like I could adapt better to Lubbock and Birmingham and then coming back to Austin,” Laughead said. “I know I can do hard things because when I was 20 years old, I moved to New York City and worked for Good Morning America.”

Laughead believes the UTNY program helps Longhorns build a solid future with the help of an incredible alumni network.

“It’s so hard making that pilgrimage to New York as a young person,” Laughead said. “But to go there with people in your same situation, to go there knowing that there are alums in the city succeeding at what you want to do and ready to offer advice, it makes what could be a really hard experience a lot easier.”

Laughead was able to offer her own advice to a student joining the program who happened to be on the same flight from Lubbock to New York.

“It was a really poetic moment,” Laughead said. “I was going to New York for the first time since then to visit and she was going for the first time for UTNY. It felt like a movie, saying goodbye and best of luck to you in the airport.”

When Joshua Moore entered the UTNY program in the fall semester of his senior year, he got the authentic New York experience. From getting on the wrong subway to living in a less than Texas-sized apartment, Moore, who graduated with a corporate finance degree in 2022, got to live and breathe New York, more than he had on weekend trips before with his family.

“I had to learn what subway to take to and from work,” Moore said. “But I felt like before we even stepped foot in the city, the preparation and guidance the UTNY staff gave us as we were leading up to the program kicking off was really nice.”

UTNY staff helped Moore map out his classes to make sure the electives he was taking would help him stay on track for graduation. He earned a position as a global portfolio management intern for the Walt Disney Company and got to experience working on a truly national scale. He often collaborated with teams on the West Coast, Zooming in from conference rooms at the UTNY headquarters across the time zones.

After hours, Moore took a theater and arts class where they got to see Broadway shows and tour a private art collection and another course where he and his cohort got to see classic tourist destinations such as the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the World Trade Center.

“Having these experiences that I would otherwise not have had was really cool and interesting,” Moore said. “I was getting exposure to these different areas and different industries.”

Moore’s cohort was relatively small, made up of only 19 people. Because of its size, the students were able to stick close together and connect on a deeper level while exploring the city.

“It was really cool to interact and network with those people that, without this opportunity, you’d probably never interface with,” Moore said.

Beyond his cohort, Moore also received support from the New York chapter of the Texas Exes. The chapter president took him underneath his wing, connecting him with people in the city and inviting Moore and the rest of his cohort to game watch parties and other events.

“I’m in this big, brand-new city, and I don’t really have people to lean on or people to go to,” Moore said. “With these types of programs, you have those people you can come to when you have questions, or you just need help getting comfortable in a new area.”

Moore, who now lives in New York full time and works as an analyst at Bloomberg News, recommends that every Longhorn that goes through UTNY gets connected with the Texas Exes.

“That’s my family here,” Moore said.

Moore almost didn’t come to UTNY. It took some convincing from his family.

“I felt like that really showed me to listen when opportunities come,” Moore said.

UTNY and the connections he made through it have helped him succeed professionally in New York and taught him to always put his best foot forward.

“I never expected to be working and living in New York,” Moore said. “But from the network I’ve made and the people that I’ve met, I really was able to see that there is an opportunity for me coming as a first-generation college student to grow and prosper and become successful in this city.”

In the fall of 2020, campus was still quiet after shutdowns from the Covid-19 pandemic. Catherine Harpold, a radio-television-film senior, had returned to campus after having her study abroad experience cut short the semester prior and was desperate for a change in scenery when she opened an email about the application deadline for UTNY.

“I literally applied on the last day possible,” Harpold said. “I got accepted and then was immediately like, ‘Yes, I’m doing this. Please get me out of Austin right now.’ It was definitely the change I needed.”

When she got to New York, Harpold had her heart set on an internship with “The Tonight Show” after years of loving late-night comedy and working as an executive producer on Texas Student Television’s show “Sneak Peak.”

She started as a research intern and worked three days a week with a team to help create packages of information about each guest coming on the show to give to the host and producers. She said this internship helped her understand the importance of teamwork in a way her previous positions hadn’t. The interns had to communicate with each other, so one person could pick up where the other left off.

When she wasn’t working on the “The Tonight Show,” she and her cohort met for classes at the UTNY Center. Her favorite course focused on the arts in New York and was taught by a former professional ballerina.

“He was so passionate,” Harpold said. “I think that’s what’s unique about the UTNY classes: they’re so specific that the people that teach them are super passionate about the class and the topic. I found that to be such a good thing because it wasn’t just a general arts class, it was arts in this city.” 

Harpold and a group of girls living in the same apartment got to experience the arts up close as they explored the city together.

“There was an immediate sense of community because we were the only people we knew in the city, so it was easy to form groups of friends,” Harpold said. “Anytime we were not doing something related to school, we were out doing something.”

They learned how to use the subways, trekked down to Rockaway Beach and walked the High Line every day. She said she can’t pass the High Line — a public park in the city — without thinking back to those days, marveling at the snow and slipping and sliding without snow boots.

“I’ve now lived in New York for almost four years, and I still remember things that I learned,” Harpold said. “There are a lot of things I discovered about New York and myself and how much I love the city during UTNY. I would literally not be living here right now if it hadn’t been for that program.”

Harpold believes that giving students the opportunity to be fully immersed in the city and see what it is like living and working in one of the most prominent places in the world can encourage them to take a chance and find career opportunities that they wouldn’t have otherwise.

“I had such a good group of people around me,” Harpold said. “We were all so curious and interested. I think that having that opportunity to explore and do whatever we wanted really made me confident enough to decide to move here. It made everything seem like it would be possible.”

Allison Clark had cabin fever after nearly a year of taking classes from her bedroom during the pandemic. A Plan II and international studies major who graduated in 2023, she said at the time she had to get out and explore.

“There weren’t a lot of possibilities in the state of the world that we were in, but UTNY was offering a hybrid work experience,” Clark said. “I got very excited about being in a new place and having the opportunity to work while also having the opportunity to learn.”

Clark set out for New York in the summer of 2021, having only visited the city a couple times.

“It was very much a leap of faith,” Clark said.

Working a remote internship from different coffee shops around the city and the UTNY headquarters, Clark began learning how to maintain a work life balance. In her classes, she was exploring what being a professional in New York could look like full-time.

“Our professor was connected with everyone in the city,” Clark said. “Every class, we had a guest speaker come in and talk about real life in the city. It wasn’t just these abstract concepts.”

UTNY brought in alumni from the New York Texas Exes chapter to shake hands and connect with students. Clark met an alum who helped her realize she wanted something more creative in her career than she thought.

“The networking aspect is something that compelled my career,” Clark said. “I still keep in touch with some people today now that I’m in New York.”

The classes also emphasized personal growth and students’ individual experience. Clark and her cohorts wrote personal reflections throughout the semester about what they were learning and how they were feeling.

“I think bringing that into an academic context was something that I wasn’t used to,” Clark said. “But it was definitely something that I needed in order for me to appreciate my experience. It didn’t feel like typical academia.”

Clark’s biggest takeaway from her time in New York was the last phrase she wrote in her reflection: no one is a stranger.

“Everyone that I met either knew somebody or knew a concept I was exploring or knew some part of the city that I was in,” Clark said. “They wanted to get to know you for you.”

Clark met so many people juggling different aspects of life — making art, working full-time jobs, building families and side hustles. She felt inspired to do everything she felt called to.

“I felt like I was able to get outside of this shell I was in,” Clark said. “I was able to take some creative liberties with my work or talk to random people or dress the way I wanted to. That was an exciting takeaway because I was born and raised in Texas. It was a new experience.”

Clark encouraged students like her who are considering applying for UTNY to push themselves outside of their comfort zone.

“You’ll meet a lot of new connections that will grow and shape you and stay with you long after you leave,” she said.

Liv Gamble, a journalism alumna who graduated in 2024, applied for UTNY at the end of her junior year after seeing countless signs advertising the program in Moody College buildings. She had taken a gap year in Paris before starting college and was intrigued by the chance to live and work in New York while still figuring out what she wanted to do after graduation.

“What I thought I wanted was starting to change,” Gamble said. “It just felt serendipitous that I could try something out while having the support of being in school.”

Finding housing and securing an internship added to the “real New York experience,” for Gamble. It was a hustle. But she received guidance from the UTNY staff and began the fall semester of her senior year interning for The New York Times. It was a dream come true but intimidating. She often felt like she had “to fake it to make it.”

“My approach to it as an intern was just to learn as much as I possibly could and get the most out of it because I knew it was a really special opportunity,” she said. “It was definitely really intimidating because the people there have had long careers in journalism.”

Thankfully, Gamble received lots of support from the professors at UTNY who helped her through her experience at the institutional paper.

“The teachers knew that you were working all day long and then coming to UT after to take classes so they were super accommodating and understanding that this opportunity took precedence over that,” Gamble said.

Gamble took as much advice from her professors at UTNY as possible, including to find a mentor in your internship to guide you.

“The greatest thing about our classes is we got to meet so many actual working people in New York,” Gamble said. “They were across all different fields and backgrounds which was really cool.”

Gamble now works at The New York Times as a planning editor after receiving a return offer from her internship. She believes that opportunities like UTNY can offer students so much and help them figure out where they want to end up.

“In college, you learn how to be a student,” Gamble said. “I wasn’t sure yet what kind of person I was going to be in the workplace, and that’s something I didn’t even know I needed to be thinking about until UTNY. It really helped me set up a foundation for the kind of professional I want to be.”