Checking In With NYC Alums

August 29, 2013

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Posted by SJMC Professor Cindy Royal:Whenever I am traveling, I love to be able to check in with former students to see how they are doing. This month, I was in Washington, D.C. for the conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. While on the east coast, I also made plans to head up to New York City for a few days to see some friends and say hi to a few of our SJMC alumni.In D.C., between conference presentations and poster sessions, I was able to visit with Texas State grad Anna Tauzin. After leaving our program, Anna received a master's degree from American University. She worked for J-Lab and then moved to the National Restaurant Association, where she serves as the Manager for Digital Innovation. I am very impressed with the direction of her career and the way she is influencing an entire industry. It was great to catch up with her.In New York, I was fortunate to be able to spend time with several former students and some friends. I arranged a meet up at Lillie's in Union Square that included Texas State grads Maira Garcia of The New York Times, Jackie Baylon of Digital First Media, Rebecca Ambrose of Rizzoli International Publications and Jessie Spielvogel who owns the media consultancy Split Aces Media. Joining us were some awesome media women of New York, Sisi Wei and Amanda Zamora of ProPublica, Annie Werner of Tumblr and Katie Zhu (soon to be at Medium), Brittany Storoz, Tiff Fehr and Kiran Bhattaram (soon to be at Stripe) of The New York Times. It was wonderful to hear about the success of our graduates and to provide networking opportunities with other professionals in the area. And it was a lot of fun. I hope to be able to do it again soon.