Michael Shin

I study buildings and build brands.

I'm an architecture student at the University of Miami who fell straight into the trap of Miami entrepreneurship. Studio taught me that everything has a reason: every surface answers to a structure, and every detail argues for the whole. Reaching an audience works the same way, which is why I ended up running brand and growth for two startups between crits — and why, when the work needed software that didn't exist yet, I learned to write it rather than wait for it.

Experience

2026 — Present

Chief Marketing Officer UTern

Brand, content and growth — and the product work behind it

  • Own the voice, the content system and organic growth for an AI internship agent built by seven students across the country — more than 1,000 students signed up as of October 2026 and about a hundred more every week, entirely organic.
  • Merged more than fifty pull requests into the production Next.js app: the blog and its editor, a newsletter with real double opt-in on Resend, and the analytics rebuild that finally reported a signup correctly.
  • Wrote the brand's single source of truth — positioning, voice, banned phrases and an approved statistics list — and built six specialist agents that read it before they draft.

2025 — Present

Chief Marketing Officer APEX STUDENT

Brand system, web and creative direction

  • Led the design and development of the app's user interface, now shipped and live on the App Store.
  • Owned the brand's creative direction and marketing strategy, managing content production and promotional campaigns.
  • Built the identity from a blank page — logo, palette, type, key visual — and the character system, LOLA, that carries it across every surface.

2024 — 2025

Installer Oeler's Industry, Inc.

Acoustic installation, construction

  • Acoustic installation in residential and commercial buildings, working in fiberglass and fabric.

Education

2024 — Present

B.Arch University of Miami School of Architecture

Minors in Art & Art History and in Marketing

  • President's Honor Roll. Cumulative GPA 4.0.
  • Winner, 2026 Michele Edelson Photography Award, Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition.

2022

Pre-College Architecture Program Carnegie Mellon University

Four-week intensive — High Pass

2020 — 2024

Diploma Fox Chapel Area High School

High Honors. Weighted GPA 4.29

  • National Honor Society.
  • Treasurer of Student Government, two years.

Leadership

2025

Rush Chair, Social Media & Outreach Chair Alpha Epsilon Pi

  • Planned, organized and ran the fraternity's recruitment strategy.
  • Shot and managed the chapter's public image across Instagram and Facebook.

2025

Treasurer Korean Student Association

  • Built and tracked the budget across the Fall and Spring semesters.

2024 — 2025

Marketing Committee Asian American Student Association

  • Photographer; designed print and digital posters for events.

2020 — 2024

President Best Buddies

President 2023 — 2024

  • Centered the club on inclusion and held a board accountable to being available whenever the Buddies needed them.
  • Helped raise $46,000 at the annual Polar Plunge — the highest total in the tri-state area.

Tools

Architecture

Rhino · Grasshopper · AutoCAD · SketchUp

Adobe

Photoshop · Illustrator · InDesign · Premiere Pro · After Effects · Lightroom Classic · Animate

Product

Next.js · React · TypeScript · Supabase · Vercel · Git & GitHub · Resend

Photo & film

Canon EOS R6 Mark II · Blender · Remotion