Serena Jimenez
Journalism Grad Wins Emmy for Local Work
Journalism graduate Serena Jimenez working at Miami’s WPBT2. Photo credit, Nicole Malanga.
Romina Herrera
Digital Media Studies Grad is Social Media Guru
Romina Herrera, who majored in digital media studies, is now the Web Content Coordinator for Miami’s Children’s Health System.
Jeffrey Pierre
Reporting on Race, Voting and Heading to NPR
Journalism major, Jeffrey Pierre, spent part of his summer covering voter disenfranchisement in place like Ferguson, Missouri, captured here.
Marlee Pereda-Ramos
Student Communicates NASA’s Missions
Caption: Journalism graduate Marlee Pereda-Ramos at NASA’s Mission Control.
Alyse Mier
Covering Capitol Hill as Local News
Alyse Mier, a journalism major, reported on Capitol Hill during summer 2016.
Covering Capitol Hill as Local News
Alyse Mier, a journalism major, reported on Capitol Hill during summer 2016.
Even though she was a journalism major, Alyse Mier never thought she’d be reporting on Capitol Hill. Until she did.
“As someone who is interested in and has done some work with magazine and fashion journalism,” Mier said, “I was a bit nervous about what this politically orientated city would have in store for me.”
Mier spent the summer of 2016 reporting throughout Washington, D.C. as an intern with The Washington Center. There, she reported for Borderstan.com and HillNow.com, hyperlocal online news organizations.
“My day-to-day tasks constantly varied,” Meir said, “which was exciting and also nerve-wracking.
On a given day, Meir said, she might be out photographing events, calling officials, interviewing restaurant or store owners, getting tips via Twitter and following those leads to cover a breaking news story.
Her experience certainly wasn’t without excitement.
“A week into my internship,” Meir said, “someone threatened to call the cops on me while I was covering a story, which was frightening and exhilarating. I’ve learned to love the thrill of it.”
Soon, her editors began assigning her “hard news” stories, leading to her covering anti-police brutality protests, gun violence memorials and writing lengthier profiles.
Aside from her duties as an intern, The Washington Center requires students to take night classes, volunteer, meet with industry professionals, participate in professional development workshops and open dialogues about social justice issues.
“It was overwhelming at times,” Meir said, “but I adapted and learned things I did not think possible.”
Student Communicates NASA’s Missions
Journalism graduate Marlee Pereda-Ramos at NASA’s Mission Control.
Recent journalism graduate Marlee Pereda-Ramos set the bar especially high for making her major matter by turning to the U.S. space program.
From June 2014 to December 2014, Pereda-Ramos interned for the NASA Kennedy Space Center as a marketing intern in the Center Planning and Development Directorate.
Her mission?
To help establish partnerships with commercial companies such as SpaceX and Boeing and government agencies and academia.
During her time, she helped establish CPD’s public-facing website by offering suggestions for its design and populating it with content obtained from internal NASA sources. She also developed presentations for directors and organized NASA events.
(http://kscpartnerships.ksc.nasa.gov/)
Then again, from June 2015 to August 2015, Pereda-Ramos interned at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas in its Strategic Partnerships Office.
There, she helped restructure their external website and assisted in creating a walk-through script to for Visitor Center guides to educate the public, and for NASA officials when they tour the area with potential partners and sponsors. During her time, she interviewed NASA’s lead scientist for the Orbital Debris Program and wrote a feature article on him for an internal newsletter that Pereda-Ramos helped establish.
But Pereda-Ramos didn’t stop there.
From September 2015 to December 2015 Pereda-Ramos returned to NASA Kennedy Space Center for a fourth NASA-sponsored internship with the Center Planning and Development Directorate, again as a marketing intern.
Pereda-Ramos shows the benefits of hard work, and that a journalism degree can span multiple career fields and physical spaces.
Reporting on Race, Voting and Heading to NPR
Journalism major, Jeffrey Pierre, spent part of his summer covering voter disenfranchisement in place like Ferguson, Missouri, captured here.
Following a call to the resurgence of radio, journalism major Jeffrey Pierre is tackling a new role as an intern at NPR’s All Things Considered.
“Public radio is actually what got me into journalism,” Pierre said. “I like hard news, but there’s something intimate about radio that lets you see what makes someone really tick.”
Pierre spent the summer of 2016 as a fellow with News21 in Phoenix. There, he’s worked specifically on a project about voting disenfranchisement.
“I’ve been traveling all over the United States, from Selma in Alabama to Detroit, Michigan and Ferguson, Missouri, where I spent a couple of days with the new chief of police,” Pierre said. “My reporting has been focused on African American voters, how they feel post-Obama and the different social and political factors keeping them from voting.”
Just as these topics have been salient for the country, Pierre said that they are also personal.
A Haitian-American, Pierre spent much of his time in FIU’s journalism program covering city meetings in largely African American and Haitian parts of Miami, including Opa-Locka, for the Miami Herald.
“A lot of my stories with the Herald are also about people in Overtown, Liberty City and Little Haiti,” Pierre said. “The editors at NPR told me that was one of the reasons they reached out to me. Newsrooms across the country are looking for people with experience in covering minority communities.”
Digital Media Studies Grad is Social Media Guru
Romina Herrera, who majored in digital media studies, is now the Web Content Coordinator for Miami’s Children’s Health System.
Romina Herrera has found her place in the digital world that so far has taken her to Japan and back.
“About a year after graduating, I went to Japan,” Herrera said. “I got a tourist visa for 90 days and planned my trip to exactly that amount of time, staying with a friend who had been living and working there for a few years.”
And it was while she was away from home that she found some clarity about what to do next with her life.
“It’s not as if something incredible or extraordinary happened while I was there,” she said,
but as time goes by, the ripples of changes that were triggered by my decision to visit there continue to be felt in my life.”
Herrera, who majored in digital media studies, had already worked part-time for the marketing agency Cause Populi after graduation. As project manager, she maintained the schedules and coordinated efforts for clients’ websites, brochures, and other marketing content. Her role was that of a liaison between the creative and developer team and the non-profit clients.
After coming back from Japan, Herrera said, she was determined to get the kind of job that would make her happy and fulfilled. “I relentlessly applied to positions that caught my eye, even if they seemed more than I could chew,” she said.
Soon, she began working on a contract basis for Miami Children’s Health System at a time when the organization was going through massive changes.
“They had just changed the name of the hospital, the domain name of their website, and took the opportunity to implement a new (Web) Content Management System as well,” Herrera said. “I came in in the midst of this gargantuan process, to assist with addressing website errors and getting all the content up and running in the new CMS.”
But the changes proved to be a good challenge for Herrera.
“Some months later, I actually became the new Website Content Coordinator, and I now consult with many departments within the hospital and health system to provide them solutions for having their content on the web.”
Herrera spends her time working closely with the IT department to maintain and develop new features on their site. She also works with external advertising and marketing agencies that run the organizations advertising campaigns, social media, and SEO.
As part of the marketing team, Herrera also answers to for video and graphics.
“Overall,” Herrera said, “I find that my role is varied, requires collaboration with other teams as well as resourcefulness and an inclination for problem solving. It is also very fulfilling to feel valuable and challenged while working for a great organization.”
Journalism Grad Wins Emmy for Local Work
Journalism graduate Serena Jimenez working at Miami’s WPBT2. Photo credit, Nicole Malanga.
Since graduating in 2014, Serena Jimenez not only has done great journalism – she’s won an Emmy for it.
In 2015, Jimenez and videographer Yoandy Vidal received an Emmy for “Dale Chihuly at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens’” segment that appeared on the locally produced Art Loft at WPBT2. Jimenez also received an Emmy nomination for her work on Art Loft Episode #319.
But she’s not done doing good work.
My goal is to keep working towards improvement,” Jimenez said. “I want to become a better producer, a better writer. Basically, I want to create and allow my career goals to grow accordingly: films, TV, novels – all of the above and beyond.”
Since graduating from FIU in the summer of 2014, Jimenez has been a freelance producer at WPBT2, though she began at the end of her senior year shooting and editing digital content there.
By her last semester in school, Jimenez had transitioned into producing educational field trips for KidVision Pre-K. Her next assignment was as Interim Series Producer for the weekly arts program Art Loft, Seasons 3 and 4.
And none of this work takes into account the time she spends writing books.
Her The Vermilion Series has two independently published installments, Fall of Falco and Rules of Enticement. Book 3, still untitled, is in the works.