Social Media Coordinator at GVSU

I oversee GVSU's flagship social media accounts -- anywhere that there's an @GVSU account, I am the one writing and posting the content. I also write for GVNext and Grand Valley Magazine, two of GVSU's primary outward facing publications.

Almost everything I do is related to writing! A lot of it is journalistic or PR-focused in nature, which is a style I had to learn when I started this job. Thanks to classes I took in the writing program, though, it was easy to pick up a new style with ease. I also do minimal design work and video editing for social media. While a lot of this is done on Canva, the design skills I learned are an essential part of both that work, and being able to collaborate with graphic designers and video editors.

I was lucky to get a job at the nonprofit I interned for my senior year a few months after graduating while still deep in the 2020 pandemic. While at that position, I was interviewed by Peg West, another one of our writers in UComm, about a project my nonprofit was heading. A year or so later, I found out about an opening in University Communications and submitted my resumé. It was partially thanks to Peg vouching for my storytelling abilities that I was offered the position I have today.

I use a lot of the skills I learned in classes in my job, but it was probably the extracurricular activities that most impacted me as a professional. Being Vice President of In the Margins for two years taught me how to lead meetings and organize projects, and participating in things like OPW (Organization for Professional Writers) and fishladder helped me learn how to collaborate with others in professional but creative settings.

Write outside of your classes! One of the best things about the GVSU writing program is all of the extracurricular opportunities available that allow you to expand your writing skills and also build your writing community. That community of other writers is one of the most valuable things I got from the program, and is something that is a lot harder to find outside of college. Whether you want to write for a magazine, edit creative works, share creative writing or find more opportunities to do professional writing, there are clubs and programs that allow you to do whatever you want, and allow you to make friends and find creative collaborators while you do.