Julia Buxman points to the Buxman Co logo displayed in Goldman Sachs.
Julia (Pedrick) Buxman (A&S ’15, M.S. in Commerce ’16) never wanted to choose between art and psychology. As a UVA Miller Arts Scholar, she majored in both disciplines, even designing an interactive sculpture for a Perception Lab study that brought the two fields together. Years later, she built a boutique agency serving the art world, affirming that she never had to choose. “Advertising is the ultimate crossover event,” she says.
That conviction began to take shape in her fourth year, when practical questions began to surface about her future. “I thought, ‘What’s scalable? What’s realistic?’” All answers pointed toward marketing. “You have to tap into psychology and visualizations to be an effective marketer,” she explains, while noting that serving as a docent at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art and having an internship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art sharpened her instincts.
Left: Julia Buxman holds her sculpture, Archetype I (Mother), previously on view at McGuffey Art Center. Right: Archetype I (Mother), sculpture by Julia Buxman, May 2015.
It was then that she saw the M.S. in Commerce program offering a way to turn those interests into a career. It strengthened the hard skills she had “left a bit untouched” as an undergraduate, while reinforcing the creative instincts she already possessed. Because she wanted to keep her momentum, the one-year format was ideal: “I didn’t have to take a break from school; I needed to keep running on that energy.”
Left: Archetype II (Animal), sculpture by Julia Buxman, May 2015. Right: Portrait by fellow arts scholar Erica Ruth inside one of Julia Buxman’s sculptures, April 2015.
While she acknowledges that the program itself felt a bit like “drinking from a fire hose,” since most of the material was new, Buxman says her arts background gave her a different kind of edge. “Having four years of Studio Art with weekly criticisms from peers and professors” had built the thick skin she needed for unfamiliar territory. Strategy felt “so psychology based in a lot of ways that I picked it up really quickly.”
She built on those fundamental skills with interpersonal ones. On the program’s January trip to New York, during a presentation featuring the CEO of a major clothing company, Buxman noticed the agency team in the room. While everyone else crowded the CEO, she introduced herself to the agency instead. “I was drawn to them because I realized they were the ones who were probably doing the work I was most interested in,” she says. The agency lead became her future managing director. “I got his email address. I sent a follow-up, and then I just emailed every month for the next six months.”
“Comm School set me up for getting me in the room with the right people,” she insists.
By the end of the program, she was startled by how much she could do. She brought a 30-page report on Under Armour to her first agency interview. The agency happened to be pitching a competitor in New Balance, and the team found her work from McIntire “incredibly useful.”
Those early agency roles, at HYFN, then at MRY, where she led the Audible account, then at Code3 where she led advertising for Athleta and Pampers Canada, clarified the kind of work she ultimately wanted to pursue. When she decided to strike out on her own, she faced a defining choice about what she wanted to look at every day. “Is it diapers?” she recalls asking herself when considering accounts she was working with that were focused on retail goods. “Or do I want to look at art every day and be really well-versed in the market around art?”
In 2021, she committed to building a boutique agency serving what she eventually termed “art tangential” work, or professional services within that sphere. Her clients include art advisers, foundations, fine art storage companies, and the fine art arm of a bank. “I’m not touching the art, but I get to help them think about how to talk about their stories,” she explains.
Running her own agency, however, came with a fresh learning curve. Buxman strengthened her skills in Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, a competitive, accelerated education program designed to help owners and entrepreneurs grow their companies. She enthusiastically notes that she was able to apply her knowledge from the M.S. in Commerce to many areas of the program.
For Buxman, the M.S. in Commerce program provided the business skills to turn her passions for art and psychology into a career in advertising—and eventually her own agency.
That instinct for connecting one discipline to another is no coincidence: Her niche draws on every part of her education. “The business acumen and the strategy is definitely M.S. in Commerce, and the depth of knowledge is certainly my undergraduate,” she says. The business itself is almost entirely referral driven and relationship based, which suits her well. “It’s not about the job itself; it’s the people and relationships,” she says. For Buxman, advertising became the place where she never had to choose between art and psychology. In the end, she didn’t split the difference between art and psychology; rather, she found the market where they meet.
