Writer,New Hope Media
What do you do in your current position?
I actively contribute to three different publications within the company. Adoptive Families magazine is a parenting magazine for adoptive parents, ADDitude magazine is a health magazine for adults and parents of children with ADHD and The Building Your Family Guide is post-infertility surrogacy, donor, and adoption resource guide.
What is your favorite part about your job?
Since I work for such a small company, I get to wear many hats. I am able to work on all three publications in any given day. One minute I could be creating a slideshow about celebrities with ADHD for the ADDitide website, the next I could be editing an article about the latest IVF breakthrough for the Building Your Family Guide, and then have to switch gears to tweet a link a touching adoption story for Adoptive Families. This job has given me a lot of random knowledge about ADHD, adoption, and infertility, which will hopefully give me an edge when I am applying for other jobs in the future.
What made you choose journalism?
Unlike some of my peers who always knew that they wanted to go into journalism, it took me a while to figure it out. I actually went to community college for two years before transferring to TCNJ as a junior. I had no idea what I wanted to major in, so for those first two years I took every kind of class imaginable — psychology, statistics, fashion design, screenwriting, sociology, theatre — trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I only took my first journalism class because my English 101 professor kept suggesting that I take her intro to journalism course. Even though I loved having her as an English professor, I was apprehensive to take her journalism class because I knew nothing about journalism. I never even wrote for my high school newspaper! But, all it took was that one class for me to get hooked. I ultimately chose journalism because it felt rewarding to share people’s stories and inform the masses by the power of the written word.
Tell us about the importance of getting involved in student media at TCNJ.
Writing for Her Campus and participating in Ed2010 while at TCNJ helped immensely. I landed my first magazine internship at Parenting magazine because I brought along a binder full of my Her Campus clips. When I interviewed for my current job, I brought along that same binder, but with clips from my Parenting magazine internship (and a few of my favorite Her Campus pieces.) Ed2010 taught me all about the ins and outs of the magazine industry.
The most rewarding part of my college experience was co-founding TCNJ’s chapter of She’s the First. She’s the First is a non-profit organization that sponsors girls’ education in developing nations. Even though this has virtually nothing to do with journalism, employers always ask about it on job interviews. I think that being able to talk passionately about an important cause has definitely helped me stand out in interviews.