The Celebrity Techsplainer of Beverly Hills

Not long after Abe Burns arrived at New York University in 2003, he started looking for a part-time job. A Miami native, he’d spent his first few months as a freshman doing unpaid internships for independent record labels. The gigs introduced him to far-flung parts of New York (or to Brooklyn, at least), got him into cool concerts, and set him thinking about a career in the industry. He realized that to land a full-time job he’d need a foothold at a bigger company. Some spending money wouldn’t hurt, either.

So one winter morning he took the F train from West 4th Street to Sony Corp.’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. He made his way to the office of Nina Webb, then the head of Sony Music’s college marketing department. Webb didn’t typically hire freshmen, but Burns made an impression. “He had such electric energy about him and was so eager to jump in and do the job,” she recalls. “I couldn’t not hire him. I just couldn’t.”