During high school, my love for writing and photography led me to study journalism. As Photography Editor of the school paper, I got to snap photos and interview people. My teacher said I was the most outgoing shy person she ever met. My best friend and I even applied to be News Team reporters for Teen People magazine and were chosen out of thousands to be among their 35 teen reporters! I credit our clever video submission in lieu of a letter, on which we declared, “We have a dollar and a dream!” That was my first experience with the national media.

Come college, I was immersed in pop culture and music, and spent each semester as the Music Editor at the paper. I also launched an environmental section to help raise awareness of important issues like the treatment of circus animals (I did a backstage investigation at Ringling Bros and was whiskers away from my beloved, endangered tigers!) and helped launch the campus music TV show. And then, summer came and I had no creative outlet. So, I started my own! I launched a music ‘zine, which I ended up self-publishing for about 10 years and eventually transiting to a blog (back before it was cool for everyone to have one) and one of the first Internet TV shows. We boasted an all-female staff of writers, hosts, photographers, designers and editors and brought our audience “What’s Hot and What’s Important.” I worked at Starbucks for years instead of getting a corporate job, in hopes of taking this platform to the big time. But, it didn’t happen (and that’s OK!). Eventually we all had to move on and get real jobs—and for me, get married.