A single class on creative entrepreneurship was enough to completely change the career path of a UX Design student. And more than that, it put her sights on one of the most coveted destinations for anyone working in tech: Silicon Valley.
Madison Freeman, a student at Jacksonville University in Florida, didn’t find her internship at a career fair or through a personal referral. It all started on LinkedIn, a platform she began taking much more seriously after a course taught by professor Katie Webber. It sounds simple when you boil it down like that, but the journey behind this achievement has way more layers than it seems, and every one of them is worth understanding.
From there, two months of interviews, a technical round, a conversation with her future manager, and an accepted offer: a summer internship in User Experience on the DevOps team at IBM, one of the most recognized technology companies in the world. There, she will do exactly what she spent her entire college career preparing for: designing intuitive, human-centered digital experiences built for scale. 🚀
Madison’s story is one of those that shows how the right learning environment can be the difference between a good idea and a real opportunity. And the most interesting part is that this journey started long before college, back in high school, when she was teaching herself HTML and JavaScript just out of curiosity, with no external pressure or defined career goal.
From curious to candidate: how it all started
Before any college or internship entered the picture, Madison already had a genuine interest in technology. In high school, she explored HTML and JavaScript on her own, without a formal course, without a teacher guiding her, without a specific project in mind. She even built her own websites and video games, getting hands-on with every line of code. It was pure curiosity, that kind of drive to understand how things work that tends to be one of the biggest signs someone will go far in the field. That technical background, even though it was informal, ended up becoming a solid foundation for everything that came next, especially when she decided to fully dive into the world of UX Design.
What started as tinkering and experimentation took on a deeper meaning over time. Madison realized that the most powerful application of her skills wasn’t just about creating things that looked cool or were technically impressive, but about using that knowledge to genuinely help people. That was the moment curiosity turned into a calling.
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In her own words, UX/UI design isn’t just about making something look pretty or run smoothly. It’s about understanding what someone actually needs, where that person is hitting a wall, and designing a solution that genuinely makes their experience better. That vision, mature and user-centered, is what separates someone who just knows their tools from someone who truly understands the purpose of design.
By the time she arrived at Jacksonville University, Madison already carried a perspective that set her apart from most of her peers. She knew how to build things on the web, understood the logic behind the code, and had the sensitivity to notice when something worked, or didn’t work, for the end user. That combination of technical skill and people-centered thinking is exactly what the User Experience market is so eager to find, especially at large companies that need to scale products without sacrificing the quality of user interaction.
JU, known for its academic environment that encourages applied creativity, was the perfect setting for Madison to turn that broad interest into something concrete and focused. The coursework gradually shaped her vision of how design can solve real problems, and it was inside one of those classes that the next chapter of her story took shape.
The class that changed everything
The creative entrepreneurship course taught by professor Katie Webber wasn’t about how to launch a startup or how to raise funding. It was about positioning, presence, and how to build an authentic professional narrative in digital spaces. That was the context in which LinkedIn went from being just a forgotten profile to becoming a strategic tool in Madison’s hands. Professor Webber encouraged students to treat the platform with the same seriousness they would give a physical portfolio or a cover letter, and Madison took that advice to heart in a way that few students do.
But the class went well beyond LinkedIn. Webber equipped students with practical career tools, guiding each of them through platform positioning strategies, portfolio development, and best practices for building a resume. On top of that, she assigned projects that mirrored real-world design tasks, the same kinds of demands students would face in the job market the moment they stepped outside the university.
According to Madison herself, the professor didn’t just teach design. She taught how to be a designer in the real world. And that’s exactly why the IBM internship felt like the perfect opportunity: a high-impact, real-world environment where she could apply everything she had been learning and building at JU.
She started updating her profile, connecting the dots between her previous experiences and the professional goals she was building within her UX Design program. Instead of passively waiting for opportunities to come to her, she began positioning herself actively, showing what she could do, what she was learning, and where she wanted to go. That move, which seems small at first, was the trigger that led her to find the listing for a highly competitive UX Design internship at IBM, within the DevOps team.
This says a lot about how the tech market, especially at major innovation-driven companies, works today: having the knowledge isn’t enough. The right people need to know you have that knowledge. Digital visibility, when built thoughtfully, can be just as powerful as a personal referral, sometimes even more so.
The IBM selection process: two months of immersion
Getting into IBM isn’t something that happens overnight, and Madison experienced that firsthand during a two-month selection process. This kind of journey involves much more than answering questions about past experiences: there are technical rounds that test a candidate’s real ability to think through User Experience solutions, practical case analyses, design reasoning presentations, and deep conversations with the people who will actually be working with you day to day. Each stage is a chance to show not just what you know, but how you think and how you handle real challenges.
The technical round was one of the most challenging parts of the process. At that point, Madison had to demonstrate her practical UX Design skills, applying concepts she had learned at Jacksonville University in scenarios that simulated real problems faced by product teams at major tech companies. The ability to articulate the reasoning behind each design decision, to justify choices based on data and real user needs, was what ultimately pushed her forward to the next phases. And the technical background she had built on her own back in high school showed up here as a quiet but powerful differentiator.
The one-on-one conversation with her future manager was the final step before the offer, and this type of interview tends to be decisive for reasons that go beyond technical skills. It’s the moment when the company evaluates whether the candidate is a cultural fit for the team, whether they can communicate clearly, whether they show genuine curiosity, and whether they understand the context they’ll be working in. Madison made it through all of that and came out the other side with an internship offer on IBM’s DevOps team, an area that brings together systems development and operations and has growing demand for professionals who understand User Experience within complex technical environments. 🎯
Eyes on Silicon Valley: the next destination
The IBM internship, as impressive as it is, is just one step within a much bigger journey. Madison’s long-term goal is to land a UX Design position at a company like Google or Apple, in other words, places where her work could reach millions of people around the world. It’s not some random dream but a goal built step by step, grounded in real experiences and consistent technical preparation.
And this is where one of Jacksonville University’s biggest strengths comes into play. Because it’s a smaller university, professors can offer independent studies for especially motivated students. That means students like Madison can customize their own education, diving deeper into specific areas that truly matter for their career goals.
In the fall, Madison will complete an independent study with professor Webber, focused specifically on User Experience and Interface Design. The plan for this course is ambitious and extremely hands-on: develop a data dashboard and create a new product from concept to completion. In other words, she’ll go through the entire lifecycle of a design project, exactly as it would happen in a real professional setting.
What Madison’s journey teaches us about UX Design and real opportunities
Madison Freeman’s path isn’t a script for how to do everything right from the start. It’s actually a story about how different pieces fall into place over time when there’s intention behind every choice. The self-taught interest in high school, the decision to study UX Design at Jacksonville University, the creative entrepreneurship class that reframed how she used LinkedIn, the rigorous selection process at IBM: each of these elements, on its own, wouldn’t carry the same weight. Together, they formed a narrative coherent and compelling enough to open one of the most sought-after doors in the tech industry.
For anyone building a career in User Experience, her story also serves as a reminder that technical learning and strategic positioning aren’t separate things. Knowing how to do the work is essential, but knowing how to show what you do, in the right place, to the right people, is what turns knowledge into opportunity. Platforms like LinkedIn, when used with consistency and authenticity, function as an extension of your portfolio and can reach recruiters you’d never be able to access through other channels.
The UX Design internship at IBM is just the beginning of Madison’s journey, but it already represents an achievement that many experienced professionals would take years to reach. And the most relevant part of all is that this result didn’t happen by accident: it came from a combination of genuine curiosity, solid education, the right mentorship, and a willingness to act when the opportunity showed up. With Silicon Valley on the horizon, the feeling you’re left with is that this story is only just getting started. 💡
