Nicole St.Jean ’98 had just arrived in New York City for a video production last August when she received a frantic phone call: Usher, the Grammy Award–winning singer, would be arriving late because his flight from Los Angeles had been canceled.

Yet within hours the next day, the music team and production crew had reset the schedule, and the performer’s special moment still took place: a surprise cameo appearance in a dance cardio workout series for Peloton Interactive, the popular fitness company founded in 2012.

As Peloton’s senior director of music partnerships, St.Jean had spent four months working with Usher’s team to arrange for the star to dance with fitness instructors in a video for the 20-minute class, which was launched in October 2021. “It takes a ton of people to pull something like this off,” she says.

Working in the music business is not something St.Jean would have predicted as a student at Colgate. Though her uncle taught her jazz piano when she was growing up in New Hampshire, she considered herself more a consumer of music than a musician and would often drive with friends from campus to concerts in Syracuse and Providence, R.I.

But as an English major, she learned many of the key skills that would prepare her for a career promoting and marketing musicians. “Colgate helped me learn how to be a communicator,” she says. “Everything I do is about presenting ideas, getting people on board with the ideas, and shepherding them to get the idea done.”

After Jim Sowers ’73 helped her find a job in corporate communications at a New York City consulting firm, St.Jean began volunteering for bands, writing their newsletters. She then took a steep pay cut, moved back home to Windham, N.H., and entered the music industry, managing the marketing for a group of bands at a start-up in Boston.

“There’s a really important juncture — if you can pull it off — of following your heart and what you love to do, if you have a safety net,” she says. “It was fortunate I could move back home; from there I was able to build a different career.”

St.Jean continued marketing musicians for 14 years before entering the world of tech when she became the head of music and artist relations at Twitter. While helping to create virtual concerts on the platform, St.Jean worked on the first Livestream concert on TikTok with The Weeknd.

Joining Peloton in January 2021 opened up a new stage in her career that allowed her to combine her passion for exercise with music. Besides training with Peloton’s app and bike, St.Jean has run a marathon a year and completed a 50-mile race in Los Angeles. “Fitness was always a big part of my life,” she says.

Beyond her work, St.Jean volunteers at Techstars, an accelerator in Los Angeles that helps start-ups through a three-month mentorship experience. “Because I’ve worked at so many start-ups myself, I’d like to share what I’ve learned,” she says.

Although Peloton is no longer a start-up, St.Jean says it feels like one because of the emphasis on cutting-edge ideas and technology. “Peloton is my dream role,” she says. “It’s the culmination of everything I’ve done until this point.”

St.Jean’s favorite music to work out to is by Rüfüs Du Sol.