Music PR boss and process engineer share career paths at Higher Options

At Higher Options, a career guidance event unfolding across morning and afternoon sessions, two professionals will stand before students to talk about how they got where they are—and how the path there looked nothing like a straight line.

Kathryn Mason runs Mason PR, a public relations firm rooted in the music industry. She knew at the outset that music was what she wanted. "I knew from day one I wanted to work in the music industry," she says. "And it's quite niche, so it's very hard to get into." She studied a business diploma with a focus on music management, then started her career working for record labels. But at some point, she stepped away. She moved abroad and became a ski instructor—a detour she describes with self-aware humor as simply "what you do."

When she returned to Ireland, Mason was resolved to stay in music but to expand what that meant. Today, her firm works with clients across the music business and far beyond it, managing relationships with people in media, podcasting, and broadcasting. She counts the IMRO Radio Awards among her clients and founded the All-Ireland Podcast Awards. The work has given her a dual perspective on two worlds that increasingly bleed into each other. "When people think media is dead, it's not dead," Mason observes. "It's anything but dead. It's just a different way of working it."

Sandi Ndebele took a different route into his field. He is a chartered principal process engineer at Eli Lilly and Company. He didn't arrive at process engineering through some childhood dream; instead, he discovered it through the work itself. During his studies, he found that the modules in chemical engineering clicked. Internships in the industry confirmed the fit. "Being a process engineer translates really well with all the stuff they try to teach us at college," he says. "And the further up you go through the degree, the more it makes sense."

But Ndebele's career, too, has had its detours. During a break from work, he traveled to Australia. While there, he found an unexpected way to earn money: hosting trivia quizzes in Melbourne bars, moving from venue to venue every six months. It was a skill he could pick up and set down, knowing his engineering job would be waiting when he returned. Now, years later, he occasionally puts those quizmaster talents to work for charity.

Neither Mason nor Ndebele followed a predetermined script. Mason's time as a ski instructor, Ndebele's months hosting quizzes in Australian bars—these were not detours that derailed them. They were experiences that broadened what they could do and how they thought about their work. Ndebele has even shifted his musical tastes from rave to metal, a change he credits with helping him concentrate. And he has a longer-term project in mind: figuring out what his cat's meows mean. "There's a lot of engineering to be done," he says, "but we'll get there."

Both will speak at Higher Options, offering students a view of careers that bend and branch, that include breaks and side pursuits, and that remain open to change. The message is not that you must know your path from day one, but that the skills you gather along the way—whether in a record label, a chemical plant, a ski resort, or a Melbourne bar—are rarely wasted.