My Clemson: J.D. Tuminski '07

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Tuminski, vice president of digital at Def Jam Recordings/Universal Music Group, is making waves in the music industry and has been since his college days at Clemson.

Q| Before you transferred to Clemson, you were going to college in Pennsylvania. What made you decide on Clemson?

A| I was really looking for something purposefully out of my comfort zone and somewhere that excelled academically. I actually made a conscious decision to look toward the South, and Clemson was the place I fell in love with. I knew almost immediately when I stepped on campus.
Q| Did you always want to go into the music industry, or was it something you kind of fell into?
A| I always wanted to get into entertainment somehow, but music came about pretty organically after I graduated. My senior year at Clemson, I started developing a website, just on a whim. I just really immersed myself in the music scene — not necessarily what was playing on the radio — and the website was a place I could share the artists I was finding with my audience. I wound up interviewing some pretty significant people. I’ll regret this, but there was a time that I was supposed to interview Drake; I couldn’t make the interview because I had something for class. It’s funny to think about that now.
Q| After an MTV internship and positions at HBO and Columbia Records, you’re now the vice presidents of digital at Def Jam Recordings/UMG. Can you give us an overview of your responsibilities?
A| Digital encompasses a lot, everything from marketing tactics to social media to website creation to advertising for the label as a brand and all the artists on the roster. Basically, digital has a hand in everything, and I’m overseeing all of our efforts there. It also includes working with external partners like YouTube and Instagram to come up with original content that complements our projects.
Q| What’s it like working with high-profile artists? How do you respect their vision and also do your job?
A| They are the talent, and they are the ones who ultimately make this a business. But I start with treating celebrities in the industry as people. I like to connect with them on a personal level. After I establish that, then I get into the music, sharing what I know about different platforms and different tactics that will really amplify the music and the message that they’re trying to bring across when they’re putting their art out into the world.
Q| Is there a misconception about working in the music industry that you’d like to clear up?
A| I think people who are maybe uninformed just think it’s partying with the celebrities and artists all day, and it’s just not that. There are elements of that and we do get access to certain things, but there’s a lot of hard work going down from all departments across the board. And it never stops. It’s a 24-hour business, and it’s a global business as well. As it turns to night in the U.S., you’re thinking about the other side of the world and what’s going on over there.
Q| Favorite Clemson tradition?
A| My personal favorite tradition is getting into town on a Thursday before a football weekend and spending those three or four days with my best friends from Clemson. We’ll go out on Thursday, go for a boating day on Friday, tailgate all day Saturday and wrap up on Sunday with a nice lunch and head back to wherever we live. It’s just fun because we live in different places around the country, and we all get together for these weekends every fall. It’s been something we’ve consistently done for 10 years now.

Designing a Great Partnership

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Pantone Color guideX-Rite Pantone has been a longtime corporate partner of the graphic communications department within Clemson’s Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics, but a recent in-kind donation valued at $500,000 has taken that partnership to a higher level. Clemson students will now have access to state-of-the-art spectrophotometers, scanning tables, light booths and software. Hands-on experience with this sophisticated technology will allow students to learn using the latest equipment in color measurement, ink formulation, and print-quality hardware and software.

“We are very grateful to X-Rite for working with us to provide students with the latest capabilities in color management and color measurement solutions,” said Bobby Congdon, assistant director of the Sonoco Institute. “These gifts will enable us to enhance our ink lab capabilities to become a fully functional, professional ink lab.”

Clemson has a history of building strong relationships with corporations across the country. These partnerships help the University financially but also connect our students to valuable real-world experiences. Partnerships with corporations such as X-Rite provide that vital link, helping integrate students’ classroom experience with career preparation.

Faith, Family and Research Intersect

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One of the darkest periods in the life of Clemson sociologist Andrew Whitehead led to some of his most recent nationally recognized research.

That dark period occurred in 2014, after Whitehead and his family — his wife, Kelly, and their three children — moved to Clemson. Faith is important to the Whiteheads, but the family couldn’t find a church that could accommodate the needs of their two sons, who have autism and don’t speak.

“We all suffered when we didn’t have a community to belong to,” Whitehead said. “We knew from experience that it’s a difficult search. We just weren’t ready yet to take the inevitable ‘walks of shame’ to retrieve our children from a church nursery because they were having a meltdown.”

Whitehead began to turn his academic eye on what his family was going through. By viewing his family’s struggles as a sociologist would — on a macro scale — he emerged with findings that revealed an unseen population and tragically underexplored issues in faith communities. Whitehead’s yearslong examination of national data found that children whose disabilities affect social interaction are the most likely to be deterred from worship.

“I hoped my research could serve as a wake-up call to religious communities,” Whitehead said. “In many ways, this population is unseen because they never show up, or when they do, they have a negative experience and never return.”

The likelihood of children with chronic health conditions never attending religious services is 14 percent higher than that of those without conditions, while physical conditions alone have almost no effect on attendance, Whitehead discovered.

The difference becomes more pronounced in disabilities that affect social interaction. One in 4 children with developmental delays, learning disabilities, anxiety or conduct disorder never attend church. That ratio becomes 1 in 3 for children with autism, depression, speech problems or brain injury. Citing prior research, Whitehead notes that 1 in 3 parents of children with disabilities changed their places of worship because they felt the child wasn’t sufficiently included.

Whitehead’s findings related to attrition in church attendance confirmed a hypothesis and helped him put his own experiences into perspective. After publications in national journals and an article in The Washington Post, he hopes his research can aid congregations in serving growing numbers of children with disabilities.

The Whiteheads found a church near Clemson that has been open to their needs. Their sons have a “buddy” during church whom they’ve grown comfortable with, and Whitehead looks forward to working with the church to fold their sons more completely into worship activities.

“If congregations rarely have children with chronic health conditions who show up to worship, that doesn’t mean they can’t still be prepared,” Whitehead said. “Having a system in place goes a long way toward preventing a religious community from becoming yet another bureaucracy that families have to navigate. Instead, these communities can become places of rest and refuge.”