Campus Celebrity: Gian Demano

Chances are if you live at the Taylor Place dorms in downtown Phoenix, you’ve seen this fashionable campus celebrity patrolling the halls on CA duty. Gian-Franco Demano, more affectionately known as Gian among friends and family, is currently a junior at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Barrett, the Honors College. Aside from being an academic powerhouse, Gian manages to balance his CA duties and have enough time to get involved in a multitude of extracurricular activities.

 

Gian-Franco Demano, aka Gian

 

Hometown: Los Angeles, CA

Favorite actress: Emma Watson

Relationship Status: Single

 

Tell us about yourself and your interests. Family is the most important part of my life. I absolutely love my mom, dad, older sister, younger sister and 6-year-old brother. I also love playing basketball. Fun fact, I almost dropped out of ASU this past summer to play collegiate and professional basketball in the Philippines, but instead decided to stay here. Lastly, I love hanging out with my friends. I’m all about making the best of my short time in college and making sure to create memorable and fun experiences with the people I love everyday.

 

What extracurricular activities are you involved in and what are some of your larger responsibilities aside from school?
Aside from school, my biggest responsibility is being a Community Assistant at Taylor Place. I’m the CA for the Barrett upperclassmen and I absolutely love my job. Also being a tutor and a Barrett, The Honors College recruiter, I have been one of many faces that represents ASU and I really enjoy doing it.

 

I hear you are a part of intramural football team. What is your intramural team called? The Sea Turtles! And I think it’s more appropriate to call us an intramural flag football organization. We get online coverage, have our own Twitter handle (follow at @SeaTurtleFB), a team mom that brings halftime snacks, and an amazing fanbase!
 

Did you start the team?  I actually didn’t start the team. The team originated from some fellow Barrett students who had played last year. Not having quite enough talent to win the downtown Phoenix league last year, they decided to offer me and some of my buddies spots on the team.

 

Why did you join the team? I realized the Sea Turtles were a great group of guys, plus I hadn’t played organized football in a while, so I was happy to join them. The organization has a great attitude and everyone has such a great time together. One of the better decisions I’ve made all year.

 

Wins and losses? We finished the season with 6-2 record. We lost in the championship game to our rival ‘Goodfellas.’ But a day later, we had realized they were disqualified because they had a non-student playing. So technically, we ended up champions.

 

What was your recent game and how did you guys do? Most recently we played in a pan-campus tournament on the Tempe location. We played teams from Polytechnic and Tempe locations. We played two pretty close games but ended up losing both. Note though a lot of our players weren’t able to play. Overall though, our competitiveness in that tournament without our top guys showed us we could definitely compete this weekend.

 

So this coming weekend, because we won the downtown Phoenix championship, we get to represent ASU downtown Phoenix at the flag football regional tournament on the UCLA campus. A few other Pac-12 schools will be there, as well as some other schools on the west coast. We leave this Friday morning and play games up until Sunday. Wish us luck as we try to win it all and make it to the national championships in Florida!

 

How do you balance school and all your other interests and responsibilities? 
I’ve always prided myself on having good time management. It’s something my dad always taught me. I organize all my classes, internship days, CA duty days, and intramural games all on one calendar. I love doing weekly checklists as well. Usually on Sundays I’ll list all the deadlines I’ll have in the upcoming week. Throughout the week, it’s a great feeling to be able to slowly cross-out tasks. 

 

Where do you see yourself in ten years? 
In 10 years, I’d hope to be at some kind of public relations and advertising firm working in the creative department. I’ve grown more and more fond of the creative process in regards to advertising, marketing and PR. I feel as if I’m creative and you could throw me right into the Mad Men series. It just seems like an awesome atmosphere to work in.