Profile: Mathew Praveen

When Mathew Praveen went to last year’s spring career fair he never thought he’d end up working in Detroit for RTT USA Inc., a company he’d never heard of.

“RTT was not even on my radar at the time,” Praveen, 27, said. “[The recruiter] made it very clear they were hiring in Detroit. I didn’t want to close any doors.”

The 3-D artist, who now lives in Troy, grew up it the Middle East and attended college in Delhi, India, before getting his master’s degree in fine arts with an emphasis in visual effects at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He’d learned of RTT when he met a recruiter from the Pasadena office.

What appealed to him as he went through the interview process?

“I like the smaller office,” he said. “They had about 15 employees in Detroit [at the time]. You get more variety at a smaller place. That was a big draw. And I’m crazy about cars.”

One thing he misses? Walking around a big city and bumping into people he knows. “Here you drive everywhere. Interaction is limited. But people are really warm.”

In his first trip downtown, Praveen wound up at an art festival in between two abandoned buildings. “At first, I was like: What is this?” he says. “But then it was fun. A lot of bands were playing and artists were showing their work.”

His advice: “Keep an open mind. This is a niche, I never thought about it in school,” he says of his work at RTT. As for Detroit: “It’s not as bad as it seems.”