Major(s): English
What is your current role? What was your journey in arriving there?
I’m the Managing Editor for Education at U.S. News & World Report, where I oversee a team of reporters and editors writing advice content on higher education and K-12 schools. From 2010 to 2021, I worked at Education Week as a reporter covering K-12 curriculum and teacher policy issues and as an assistant managing editor. Prior to that, I was a health-care reporter and the editor for a website about learning disabilities. I began my career as an elementary special education teacher and a reading specialist.
What do you enjoy about your work? What do you struggle with?
As an editor, I enjoy mentoring reporters and seeing their growth over time. It’s satisfying to take individual stories and larger projects from conception to publication, and to see the impact of that work in a variety of ways: through readership numbers, audience feedback and, at times, in shifts in public perception and even policies. There’s a lot of pressure associated with this kind of high-profile work, but I enjoy being part of a field that’s committed to integrity and transparency.
Do you have any advice for students thinking about entering your industry?
As a mentor told me, “If you want to be a writer, you need to be around other writers.” Get as many clips as you can wherever you can. If you can write, your work will speak for itself.
How did your time at Wesleyan influence your career choice/journey?
I was an English major – mainly because I loved reading, discussing and writing about novels, and wanted to spend my time in college doing those things. I think the most impactful moments I had at Wes were the individual conversations I had with professors about my writing. To this day, I think of their poignant feedback on adverb use, sentence structure and how to build an argument. I also loved working in the writing center and helping other students with their essays. And I took a class with Anne Greene in which we read novels and then the authors came in to talk to us – what a gift!
Updated as of September 29th, 2023
