SF State Graduates are Turning the World 'Inside Out'

SF STATE NEWS -- While still a film student at San Francisco State University, Jonas Rivera cold called now-legendary animation studio Pixar to see if it had an internship program. It didn’t until that moment: Rivera became Pixar’s first intern, pitching in to help on the production of “Toy Story.” Rivera stuck around to work on many more Pixar projects in a variety of roles, eventually producing “Up” and the recent smash “Inside Out.” “Going to San Francisco State was like the great stepping stone into my career,” Rivera said in an SF State video interview. “And the thing I like to talk about is that it made me feel like, ‘Oh, there's a brother out there [and] people that feel the way that I do about film.’” Rivera isn’t the first (or last) Gator to turn his passion into high-profile success. At SF State, students don’t just acquire knowledge and skills; they also absorb a mindset — one devoted to investigating different points of view and questioning old assumptions.