Mariah is currently a product line manager at Corning, a more than 170-year-old company that specializes in glass and ceramics for everyday technology such as smartphones. She works in their Gorilla Glass Solutions division, specializing in consumer electronics like laptops and e-notebooks.

As a IIIrd former at Millbrook, Mariah spent much of her free time at the Trevor Zoo. Helping zoo staff with various projects provided her with a sense of belonging on campus. It also inspired a lifelong interest in environmental science and passion for conservation work. In her words, “I’d always been an animal lover, but the zoo helped me understand why that mattered on a broader level… Millbrook gave me a sense of being part of something bigger than myself.” Mariah went on to pursue a degree in Natural Resources at Cornell University.

After graduating from college, Mariah found it challenging to pick a career. “When you have the opportunity to pursue almost anything, it’s hard to know where to start.” She describes her professional path as a “circuitous one,” joking that “résumés requiring some kind of diagram to adequately follow might be genetic.” She was a science teacher and paralegal before deciding to attend law school. After her first year at Brooklyn Law, she faced “what felt like an existential crossroads.”

“Midway through [my life] I realized I’d been choosing paths I knew would make other people proud. And then, when I inevitably failed, I could say I never really wanted it anyway. The missing piece was acknowledging that I have agency in my choices. I finally decided to take ownership—even if that meant falling on my face.”

Following this realization, Mariah joined a startup where she discovered her love for product innovation and brand strategy. She completed her MBA at Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management in 2022. Mariah then joined Johnson & Johnson as a Global Strategic Marketing Manager, focused on the development of orthopedic medical devices that utilize AI and robotics.

But one day in the fall of 2022, she “got inexplicably sick. Within six months I rapidly went from running marathons to using a walker. I was housebound for about a year and a half while working full-time. After an incredibly lonely and scary 18 months, I was finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I have what’s called a dynamic disability: some days I walk fine; other days I need a cane or a rollator. My service dog, Hickory, has been a huge part of giving me the confidence to broaden the possibilities I see for myself. Becoming physically disabled changed everything, particularly how I think about design and usability. Nothing about my life is what I envisioned, but it has unraveled in an incredibly beautiful way. Ironically enough, that is the silver lining.”

Mariah’s advice to Millbrook students as they pursue their future career paths is: “You’ll become many iterations of yourself—and that’s okay. Goals and needs change…Life will have so many unplanned chapters: some challenging, some triumphant, all temporary. Embrace that fluidity. Who you are is malleable, and that’s exciting.”