Alyssa Valencia ('13) helps light up Walt Disney World.

As a show lighting designer for Walt Disney Imagineering, the theatre graduate helps create the lighting designs for new projects -- from lampposts to accent lights in an attraction.

She uses the same principles she learned in her Lighting and Sound I class at UNT -- which also taught her that it is OK to ask for help.

"You are never a fool if you raise your hand or ask a question during a meeting and, luckily, Walt Disney Imagineering has the same theory," she says. "We push ourselves and our designs and technology to the max every day, so it makes sense that we are always learning."

One perk of the job: She gets to walk around the Orlando amusement park when only a handful of people are around.

"It is one of the best feelings in the world," she says, "when my team and I have been working toward a goal for many years and at night, a few days or hours before opening, we get to add the final magical glints that make Disney different from everyone else."