About Me
About Me
P.S. This is me on the set of WCBS in New York City!
I’m currently a student at Brigham Young University studying communications and journalism. I work as an executive producer for The Daily Universe— BYU’s student magazine.
I spend every morning searching for the latest local, national, and international news stories to bring them to an audience of students and alumni. In addition to those tasks, I am a student mentor to journalism students learning about video storytelling. I help them write, edit, and produce content that is shared on The Daily Universe website and their own personal portfolios.
I love journalism, and I plan to use my skills as a creator, communicator, and facilitator to expand my abilities into the world of journalism, public relations, advertising, marketing and other related fields.
Let’s look at my resume and why it applies to you!
At a Glance
Breaking it Down
Since beginning my role at The Daily Universe in February 2023, I’ve climbed my way up the ladder and have been most recently promoted to executive producer—second hand to editor in chief.
Starting on the technical side taught me hands-on skills about handling camera equipment, prompter tools, live switchers and video editing software. In addition to physical skills, I learned a lot about workflow, time management, and gained an eye for quality content.
Being the . technical director required me to be in a lot of high-stress and high-pressure situations—Everyday we would livestream broadcasts, and my job was to manually punch in video, graphics, and cameras to make sure the shows looked seamless.
This experience taught me a lot about regulating not only my emotions during stressful situations, but also making sure my team felt reassured and prepared at all times during the process. This skill is applicable to all types of relationships, both between team members and also between business to customer. Knowing how to navigate attitudes between a companies audience is essential in creating good relationships amongst consumers.
Resumes are a great way to show all the work I’ve done, but not so good for showing what I’ve learned and the skills I obtained. If you don’t want to read all of this, let’s schedule an interview ;)
The Daily Universe
Because my role consisted of me looking at video content everyday and providing feedback to students, I am good at recognizing good and engaging content. These lessons are reflected in my work: I strive to make my work original, creative and engaging to my audience.
After serving as a technical director, I took my hand in. social media. The most important and applicable skill I learned from this is how to analyze data and develop strategy based on my discoveries. Every week I developed content strategies and schedules to optimize social engagement. At the end of my position, I created a presentation summarizing data from engagement across all of our social media platforms. I found that in the 4 months I served in that role, I grew engagement by 20%!
I now serve as the executive producer for all broadcast and video content in the journalism program. My time as a director was unique for this role—Traditionally the producers are not accustomed to the technical processes that happen in a production, this was obvious as a director because I would often run into problems with producers trying to do things that weren’t “technically” plausible. Once I took over the producer role, I was able to use my knowledge of directing to facilitate better communication within my team.
This experience is now a repeated practice when I’m evaluating a new task. When I am put on a new team or project, I take the time to brainstorm all of the possible parts that go into what I’m creating, even the ones that seem unrelated to me. This allows me to come up with efficient, creative solutions and tactics for the task at hand. I really value taking a step back when faced with a challenge to be able to see all the moving parts and where ideas can be created.
Provo Pom Squad
Provo Pom Squad was a business I started this last summer to give back to my community. I cheered for all of Junior High and High School while volunteering with a local youth sports group that had cheer teams for little kids. Since moving away, I was missing that connection I had to my community and wanted to involve myself more into my new home. To achieve this, I started my own cheer group where kids could sign up and learn the basics of being on a pep squad.
Starting a business from scratch taught me how to use my skills in unique ways that I hadn’t previously engaged in. I used my experience researching community events to recruit clients for my business. I would go to where local sporting events were being held and talk to parents about trying out a cheer clinic I was hosting. I joined local facebook groups and sent messages out about clinics I was having for little kids interested in cheer. The result of this networking landed me over 100 clients in a 4 month period.
I also used my investigation techniques to find out what potential clients wanted from my specific business. What I found out is that yes, parents want their kids to be outside and active during the summer, but what they value even more is that they want their children to be passionate about something that is good for them (like being outside and active). I used this insight to create a business model where parents could send their kids to me and I would make sure they had the time of their lives. The clinics were only for the summer, so I needed a reason for parents to sign their kids up for something that would only last a couple weeks. My solution—I honed in on the idea that after my clinics, their kids would be asking for more, and they would have the foundational skills to go out and do it.
Creating a business was foreign to me, but I knew I had the skills and resources to do it. I’m not one to shy away from a challenge or new idea, even when I think I don’t know what I’m doing, I prioritize looking at it with different angles and investing my time and effort into finding unique solutions to any problem I face.
Stage Marketing
Stage Marketing taught me a lot about how to be a self-starter. This was a remote position I was in where I wrote articles for The Daily Herald. While there was some interaction with my leaders, a lot of it was up to me. I was in charge of finding my own content, doing my own research, and ultimately measuring my own success and improvement. This was a challenge for me, at the time I was very motivated by clear direction and guidance, with little experience in being on my own.
To navigate this, I became very organized: Each week I would come up with 3-5 pitches for content to get approved by my editors. While that was getting approved, I would rank my ideas based on timeliness, relevance, and entertainment. Once my pitches went through, I would use my rankings to pick out what I would work on that week. Then I would do a deep dive researching the topics and getting as much information as I could. After that I would story board what I was writing and work on it section by section.
This routine helped me stay motivated throughout my time there. By keeping myself focused and engaged, I learned how to be better at doing things on my own without getting off track. I now apply this lesson to market myself. It’s challenging to enter a workforce on your own. As a student, you are put on a path with clear instructions. If you do the bare minimum, sure you’ll graduate, but did you really set yourself up for success? Learning how to be a self-starter and find ways to use my skills and passions outside of what I’m required to has given me a harder work-ethic, and a greater understanding of the resilience and determination it takes to create success.
Please contact me if you have any questions about me resume or are interested in my work. I’d love to get into even more specifics about my work, passions, and skills.