CICS Alumni Profile: VP of Marketing & Sales Reflects on His Experience at CICS Northtown Academy

1. Why did you choose CICS Northtown Academy (NTA)?

I chose CICS Northtown Academy because I struggled heavily with ADHD in middle school and wanted to attend a high school with an excellent program and support in place that would help me to flourish. CICS Northtown Academy turned out to be exactly that place! 

2. What were your favorite classes at CICS Northtown Academy? What made them special?

I really enjoyed my social studies classes at Northtown. It was the first time I realized I had an interest in history. I had wonderful teachers who gave compelling lectures and painted vivid pictures of what things used to be like in bygone eras. It captured my imagination and inspired me to do my own investigation to learn more about the time periods that interested me most. 

3. Describe the campus culture you experienced at CICS NTA.

The campus culture was open, and friendly, and was heavily aided by the fact that the Northtown student body was so diverse. I was grateful to be learning in an environment with so many people from different backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. 

4. Did you have a mentor, teacher, or other staff member at CICS NTA who inspired you? 

Mr. Novick! He was my homeroom teacher who was a kind and supportive mentor who demonstrated that success was possible even with a severe learning disability. I will forever be grateful for his words of wisdom and his years of support. 

5. How did CICS NTA help prepare you for your future education and career goals? 

Northtown gave me the skills to work with people who were different from me, to think critically and to be organized and prepared. These skills would have been important to any career path I would have gone down. I’m so grateful that I was pushed to develop these habits early so that they were second nature when I reached the professional world. They are habits that have served me well! 

6. Share an experience from your time at CICS NTA that was especially memorable. 

Field Day at Northtown was fun! There’s nothing quite like the joy of jumping around in a bouncy house with your fellow peers in high school. 

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Jack Kilian has been extensively involved in the decorated apparel industry since 2012, starting at the age of 14. From beginning with the basics of working in production for Sharprint as a press operator to moving on to take over sales marketing and customer service for the company, he has covered it all. To date, Jack has intuitively helped expand the company from a local contract decorator to a national multifaceted decorated apparel company working with some of the most prominent promotional products vendors, clothing lines, and music merchandise companies in the United States.

With a heavy focus on high-end printing, quality embroidery, innovative DTG printing, and top-of-the-line customer service, Sharprint has grown substantially in sales in the past few years and is still healthily growing.