One graduate is moving on to work on a cancer drug; another is entering the complex world of supply chains.
Isabella Rooney, a chemistry student graduating from Northeastern University, is looking forward to her first gig after college.
After graduation, she’ll be working for Mariana Oncology, a Watertown-based biotechnology company that focuses on revolutionizing cancer treatment.
A peptide chemist, Rooney says she’ll be working on cancer therapies.
“During my first co-op, my manager recommended me for the job,” Rooney says. “She said I’d be a good fit.”
Mariana Oncology is owned by Novartis, a multinational pharmaceutical company with more than 78,000 employees worldwide.
It was a best-case scenario for Rooney.
“I honestly owe it all to Northeastern,” she says. “I wouldn’t have this job without the co-ops. So many people are struggling and the only reason I knew about this position was because of my co-ops.”
She’s just one of 6,493 undergraduate students on the Boston campus who received their diploma in 2025. Another 5,596 graduate students on the campus completed their studies this year as well.
Many students will leave Northeastern after graduation with jobs already waiting for them. According to the university, 97% of Northeastern graduates are employed or in graduate school within nine months of graduation.
During Sunday’s commencement, students were eager to talk about their next steps.
Keynan Jubran, who is graduating with a degree in business administration and starting a job in June, was enticed into exploring a different side of the industry he hopes to break into in the coming years: supply chains.
Jubran, who is 22, will be starting with ENE Systems, a Canton, Massachusetts-based machine learning-focused HVAC contractor.
While at Northeastern, he studied supply chain management and entrepreneurial startups.
“I will be focusing a little bit on their sales and management before transitioning into a more supply chain and procurement role,” Jubran says.
“This position is a great opportunity to stay in Boston, with a little bit of supply chain,” he says.
For others, co-op was their ticket to employment.
That was the case with 23-year-old Chad Noto, a business management major with a minor in civil engineering.
Noto will begin work at a Beverly, Massachusetts-based window reconstruction firm, where he had been on co-op in 2024.
Specifically, Noto is taking part in a construction management apprenticeship program, where he’ll participate in three eight-month cycles in field superintendent work, project management and estimation.
“I had an idea of what I wanted to do pretty early on,” he says.
So did Emily Chen, who studied business administration with a concentration in accounting and management.
“The management concentration was definitely my focus, so starting in January 2026 I’ll be working at Crow LLP doing state and local tax and unclaimed property,” Chen says.
She recently completed her co-op at the company.
“One of the reasons why I’m glad my co-op worked out,” Chen adds. “They already know me and I know them.”
Ashley Mejia, 21, graduates this year with a major in psychology. She’ll be working as a talent acquisition specialist at a staffing firm in New York City.
The company, based in Midtown Manhattan, is Canopy AI Search.
“A lot of psychology majors, if they don’t do clinical work or counseling, a lot of the time end up doing something in [human resources],” Mejia says.
She says she’s very happy with the decision.
“This is exactly what I wanted,” Mejia says. “I didn’t know if I wanted to do counseling after the first year or two of classes. But when I figured out that the corporate HR space is where a lot of psychology students go, I thought this was perfect.”