Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

Upon graduation, SUNY Korea students go further on their journey to realize their dreams, working at various renowned companies.  Some students, however, choose to go to graduate schools to invest in their future.    Graduate school often acts as the academic version of professional training, enabling students to jump straight into their desired careers with all the necessary knowledge in the workforce.    Please check the link below to read the stories of recent SUNY Korea graduates who have decided to pursue their interests in more depth at different graduate schools abroad.        Click here   

“Flower Warrior of Camillia Island”, FIT Professor Linda Kim’s fashion work, will be displayed in the 2021 International Fashion Art Exhibition in Jeju, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture.     A total number of 81 fashion designers from 8 countries, and 8 potters, are participating in this exhibition, which takes place on the 1st floor of the Obaekjanggun Gallery of Jeju Stone Park.  (2021.07.15 – 2021.08.15) The theme of the exhibition covers “Local- Rising Jeju,” which deals with the sub- themes: earth, myth, and heritage.     *Online Exhibition: YouTube: Click here Instagram: Click here    

Dr. Myung Oh, the Honorary President of SUNY Korea, was introduced in a documentary program (산업방송 채널 i) as a leading figure in constructing the infrastructure of the nation as a world-leading ICT powerhouse.         Dr. Myung Oh, a leader who transforms the world, rewrote the Information and Communication chapter of Korean history as he developed TDX, a 4 mega-D Ram semiconductor, and a computerized system for the 1988 Olympics.     Some other achievements of SUNY Korea’s Honorary President are successfully hosting the Taejon World Exposition and establishing Korea Railroad Research Institute and Incheon International Airport.       *To watch the documentary: Click here    

June 30, 2021 In a commencement ceremony on June 18, 41 FIT students graduated from SUNY Korea, receiving an AAS in Fashion Design or Fashion Business Management. Of those graduates, 26 attended the event in person. SUNY Korea President Wonki Min and Honorary President Dr. Myung Oh addressed the graduates from the stage; Stony Brook University President Maurie Mclnnis and FIT President Joyce Brown offered congratulations remotely. “How we conduct ourselves in difficult times is a measure of character, and you, the class of 2021, seem to have character to spare,” Dr. Brown said, in a speech that acknowledged the challenges of learning during a pandemic. “This experience, arduous as it may have been, will serve you well for the rest of your lives.” SUNY Korea is a global SUNY campus founded in 2011 in the high-tech business district of Songdo, near the capital city, Seoul. FIT began offering its two most popular programs there in 2017. Graduates can attend FIT in New York City for their bachelor’s degree; since the first graduating class in 2019, 100 students have selected this option.  Watch a video of the June 18 ceremony. Click here to read the original article

June 28, 2021 Stephan Kanlian, chair, Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management (CFMM), was a recent guest on The Future Shop podcast in an episode titled “The Future of Retail Leadership.” He appeared with Morgan Hagney, assistant vice president of omni-retail marketing, Maybelline New York, and a 2017 CFMM graduate. Podcast host Wendy Liebmann discusses with Kanlian and Hagney the expertise retail leaders will need in the future, along with the critical capabilities required in the new “phygital” retail environment. The Future Shop podcast, presented by WSL Retail Strategists & Shopping Futurists, was originally released on June 14. Listen to or download the episode from the WSL Strategic Retail podcast page. The podcast is also available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other apps. Click here to read the original article  

June 24, 2021 On Wednesday, June 23, on YouTube Premiere, students from the FIT Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing and Management (CFMM) master’s degree program presented their capstone project—The Future of Consumerism—a two-part study spanning 16 countries that examines how COVID-19 triggered shifts in consumer mindsets and identifies its ensuing impact on brands and retailers in a post-pandemic world. Part One of The Future of Consumerism study, titled The Future of Global Consumption, addressed the shift from shareholder-led capitalism to consumer-led capitalism. Part Two, The Chameleon Consumer, examined the evolving values of U.S. consumers and their emotional relationship to purchasing. Key takeaways from the research are as follows: CFMM Market Opportunity #1: The Circular Economy We live in a linear economy in which consumers and brands are on a never-ending cycle of take, consume, and dispose. With a circular economy, brands can be value-driven and allow consumers the opportunity to disrupt the old pattern with a model of “make, use, return, and repeat.” Today, only 9% of the global economy is circular and the opportunity for brands to profit from the untapped 91% will be valued at $4.5 trillion by 2030. (Accenture) Consumer Behavior: The Future of Traceability Consumers track all aspects of their lives and are looking to make better choices for their futures. Therefore, brands need to put the consumer’s core values at the center of their business and strategy. 66% of global consumers align themselves with brands that mirror their values. (FIT Lifestyle Survey, 2021) 88% of global consumers want brands to help them make a difference. (Forbes, 2019) 71% of global consumers are willing to pay a premium for brands that provide traceability. (IBM Institute of Business Value, 2020) Recommendation: CFMM’s Personal Impact Index (PII) Brands must value consumers over all other stakeholders. Research led the students to create an indexing tool, dubbed the “Personal Impact Index (PII),” through which consumers can track every purchase to see how it aligns with their social values, such as transparency and sustainability. In turn, consumers with higher PII scores can unlock higher credit scores as a result of participating in ethical consumption as responsible global citizens. Simultaneously, brands can leverage PII data to predict future purchasing behavior and marketing opportunities. CFMM Market Opportunity #2: Understanding the Post-COVID Consumer How can brands in the U.S. pinpoint consumers’ shape-shifting values? Brands can better serve their consumer audience by identifying which of the following CFMM-coined values is driving their purchasing decisions: “For Me” values: introverted and self-serving “Fulfillment” values: rewarding and community-building “Fundamental” values: logical and practical Consumer Behavior: Chameleon Consumers Today’s consumer is like a chameleon, constantly changing their purchasing behavior based on mood, situation, and core values. 75% of U.S. consumers believe their purchasing decisions shift based on the circumstance they are in. (FIT Lifestyle Survey, 2021) Recommendation: CFMM’s Chameleon Credo The CFMM students developed a brand survival guide, coined the Chameleon Credo, which brands must follow to future-proof their businesses: Deliver newness that’s intentional when it comes to communication, innovation, and buying channels. 62% of U.S. consumers say brands need less assortment and higher quality. (FIT CFMM Consumer Values and Behaviors Survey, 2021) Predict the shift by understanding what a consumer values the most at a particular moment (flexibility, quality, wellness, time and convenience, price, or community) 100% of the time, flexibility was marked as a top 3 driver in all purchase scenarios presented to survey respondents. (FIT CFMM Mood Mapping Survey, 2021) Transform the experience by offering interactivity from the comfort of the consumer’s home. 7 out of 10 respondents prefer shopping online because it’s convenient for them. (FIT Shopping Experience Survey, 2021) Click here to read the original article

June 7, 2021 In Study.com's 2021 rankings, FIT’s Animation, Interactive Media, and Game Design major was ranked No. 9 among similar programs nationwide. The site chose FIT’s program among hundreds of others based on academic and career resources, the quality of education, faculty, and more. According to the site, strengths of FIT’s computer animation program included affordable tuition, competitive admissions, and a high graduation rate. FIT’s BFA program in Animation, Interactive Media, and Game Design offers one of the most comprehensive curricula in the country in this growth field. Study.com is a learning platform that publishes numerous rankings in an effort to help students make college and career decisions. Click here to read the original article

May 18, 2021 Learn how the iconic costumes and sets were created for Halston, a new limited series streaming now on Netflix, in an intimate conversation with costume designer and FIT alumna Jeriana San Juan (The Get Down, The Plot Against America) and production designer Mark Ricker (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Escape at Dannemora). This creative team will discuss how they brought the world of the American fashion icon to life, often drawing on assets found at The Museum at FIT (MFIT) and the college’s Special Collections and College Archives for inspiration. Moderated by Raissa Bretaña, who teaches costume design and fashion history at FIT and is also an alumna, the talk premiered Monday, May 24, on Vimeo. Click here to read the original article

May 12, 2021 Dr. Preeti Arya, assistant professor of Textile Development and Marketing, has become a go-to source for journalists writing about performance textiles. She is an expert in textile composites and finishes, research and product development, and textile science and technology. At FIT, she teaches courses on finishes, fabric development, and performance textiles. Within the past year, Arya spoke with Glamour about choosing sustainable fabrics, with Women's Running about how to make athletic gear last, and with Sourcing Journal about the promise of antimicrobial finishes in medical textiles. For NBC News, she weighed in on eco-friendly weighted blankets, and for HuffPost, she discussed the damage done by machine-washing. She also praised the strength and drape of hemp for Hemp Benchmarks. Click here to read the original article

May 5, 2021 FIT has one of most popular and renowned Illustration programs in the country—and two recent rankings help make this case. In its 2021 list of the Top Public Illustration Schools in the U.S., Animation Career Review ranked FIT No. 1. The ranking was based on academic reputation, admission selectivity, depth and breadth of the program, value, and employment data. The site recognized FIT for providing excellent training on computer skills employers require and for the program’s unique visual thesis process. Additionally, FIT’s status as a public college means tuition is affordable, and students get access to resources throughout the SUNY system. StateUniversity.com hranked FIT No. 2 nationally in its list of Most Popular Schools for Illustration. Both public and private colleges were in the running. Ed Soyka, chair of the Illustration program, believes a number of FIT’s strengths factored into these rankings: the motivated and talented students; the focus on myriad fields within commercial illustration, such as editorial, video games, and advertising; the college’s central location in New York City; and the new hybrid classrooms, which are equipped with both digital and analog media, so that students can jump back and forth as needed. Soyka gives special commendation to the caliber of teaching. “Our faculty are expert and highly experienced, both as freelance illustrators and as very empathetic and supportive teachers,” he says. Click here to read the original article  

July 8, 2021 More than 150 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. But even as that number approaches fifty percent of the U.S. population, misinformation and misconceptions about the vaccine and the science behind it are making it difficult to drive that number to even safer levels. Addressing the issue, the Stony Brook University Labor Council hosted a COVID-19 vaccine panel on June 23 that featured a diverse group of Stony Brook experts, moderated by Stacey Finkelstein, associated professor of marketing in the College of Business, and vice president for academics, UUP West Campus. “The underpinnings of vaccine hesitancy are numerous and deal with questions ranging from science to psychological biases,” Finkelstein said. “Anti-vax attitudes are not the same as being hesitant, and even those who are pro-vaccine may experience hesitancy… People who are hesitant have questions, and we’re hoping to answer some of them here today.” Kenneth Kaushansky, senior vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University, took on questions surrounding the current COVID variants, including the Delta variant, which he described as “totally expected.” “We know that the natural history of virtually every viral infection is that it will mutate with time,” he said. “By ‘variant’ we mean that the nucleic acid structure changes. Most of those changes are irrelevant, but occasionally the virus creates a mutation that makes it more transmissible or enables it to escape immune system surveillance.” Kaushansky said the variant is now in almost every state in the United States and that mutations have changed the infectivity, but not in any way that affects the ability of natural or vaccine-induced immunity to deal with it. “This variant is supposed to be a bit more infectious than the other viruses, but it’s completely covered by neutralizing antibody responses that are directed by any of the vaccines that are generated,” said Erich Mackow, professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook. He said a very small number of breakthrough cases — around 1 in 10,000 — are yielding mild COVID positivity but not serious disease. “These vaccines seem to be almost 100-percent effective against serious disease, hospitalization and death, which is a very important point.” Bettina Fries, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Renaissance School of Medicine, pointed out that those who have received a full course of vaccines and who are infected now are not being hospitalized or dying. “We’re seeing younger people coming in, and yes, they don’t get as sick as the older folks, but they do get sick, and in some cases, very sick,” she said. “That is the reason the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is pushing for everybody to get vaccinated.” Immunologist Catherine Feintuch addressed confusion surrounding Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and the difference between full FDA authorization and emergency-use authorization. “Look at it as comparing a courthouse wedding to a country club wedding,” she explained. “At the end of the day the two people are still married, but the bells and whistles are different. With the emergency-use authorization, you have all the critical safety and efficacy information submitted. The only piece that’s missing is the six-month follow-up data. Moderna and Pfizer have already submitted for full authorization approval. We’re in unprecedented times, but no steps were skipped and the safety and efficacy data we have is very, very good.” The panel also reviewed concern for potential long-term effects as a contributor to the vaccine decision-making process. “When we talk about vaccines, what we are actually doing is giving somebody a substance against which their body makes an antibody response,” said Fries. “This antibody response sort of becomes a cell memory response that will remember this antibody response. If years from now you need to fight coronavirus again, your body will still be able to mount this antibody response.” Fries said that vaccine-hesitant people may fear an unwanted immune response that accidentally recognizes not only the virus, but something else that you have in your body, which is called an autoimmune response. “We would have seen that already, and we didn’t,” she said. “After two months your antibody response is at its max. If you don’t see it by then, there’s no reason to believe that you’ll see it 10 years from now. There have been patients that had thromboembolic events (blood clots) that we are looking into. But there’s no biological evidence that supports something developing 10 years from now, and the concern of the vaccine somehow getting integrated into your genome is also not biologically supported.” Mackow said that “the other side of the coin is that instead of worrying about the side effects of the vaccine, what we should be worrying about is the long-term effects that we don’t know about from having gotten COVID and whether damage from the infection will predispose us to later pulmonary or cardiac disease. Those are going to be much more worrisome going forward.” Feintuch offered a sobering observation regarding future exposure. “Everyone’s going to be exposed to coronavirus at some point,” she said. “It’s here to stay for the foreseeable future, and unless you plan to isolate and mask yourself for years, you will be exposed. So, you really can’t compare the vaccine versus nothing; the appropriate comparison is getting the vaccine versus getting coronavirus.” Fries advised those who were pregnant that the only way they can protect their baby is by being vaccinated before the baby is born. “From a protective point of view, you protect your baby best if you give them as many antibodies as possible before they are born,” she said. Ruobing Li, assistant professor, School of Communication and Journalism, addressed the difficulties presented by the proliferation of misinformation. “Many people are misinformed and just don’t know it,” she said. “They truly believe in their information as much as we believe in the information that we’ve gathered here.” She also advised double-checking your own information when it seems to conflict with someone else’s. “Try not to treat the conversation as a corrective lecture,” she warned. “Many times you hear, ‘Oh, I just read it on Facebook’ or ‘I just saw it on Twitter.’ People don’t realize those are just platforms and not sources of the information. They are not going to be responsible for every single piece of information that’s circulating on them.” Kaushansky offered some final guidance and advised not to wait get vaccinated. “You can take precautions and be as careful as possible, but if you go out there’s a chance you might get infected,” he said. “Why wait? People who work in the health sciences didn’t wait. There’s not a lot to fear here.” Fries said that in every worldwide pandemic, the breakthrough came with vaccines. “Go ask the older folks who saw kids die of measles growing up. Polio was a nightmare two generations ago. Plague killed a third of Europe in the 1300s and recurred until the 19th century. With all of these, progress came from hygiene and vaccination. Almost every physician at Stony Brook Medicine got vaccinated. Why? Because we saw those patients die, we saw terrible and devastating loss. 40,000 kids lost a parent during this pandemic.” “As a psychologist, I know that fear and risk are very personal judgments, and it’s really important to listen and heed the experiences of those who have been on the frontlines treating patients,” said Finkelstein. “Sometimes we process things emotionally, but we really need to think about the very real consequences to not being vaccinated.” — Robert Emproto Click here to read the original article

July 6, 2021 REMINDERS: Ice Cream Social TOMORROW and More As more of us have begun to return to campus today, here are just a few reminders to help us all thrive this summer and fall … Stronger Together. Reminder #1: ICE CREAMJoin us for a free Ice Cream Social tomorrow – Wednesday, July 7, 12-2 pm – outside the Stony Brook Union  (rain location: Student Union lobby). Student Affairs will also be hosting an Open House event called Stony Brook Union: Yesterday and Today – with tours every 20 minutes highlighting the new, and improved, Union and where to find all the services you need. Reminder #2: Submit Your Full Vaccine Status for Relaxed COVID ProtocolsOn June 23, we shared a Coming Back Safe and Strong Update highlighting new COVID protocols from the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations (GOER), including more relaxed guidance for fully vaccinated individuals, including no need to physically distance, wear a mask, test weekly or self-screen daily in non-healthcare settings. If you haven’t yet, you can submit your full vaccination status simply and directly on your personal SOLAR account. Click here for instructions. Reminder #3: Affirm That You’ve Read and Will Follow GOER GuidanceBy this Friday, July 9 (or within three business days of returning to campus for remote workers), New York State requires that all State employees affirm they have read and understand their obligation to follow GOER’s revised guidance and its provisions. It’s easy and can be accomplished right on SOLAR. Find detailed instructions here: Revised Workplace Guidance – Instructions. Reminder #4: Be sure to check out/bookmark our new Stronger Together website, with a page highlighting the Latest COVID19 Guidance. There’s also a Calendar of Events featuring seminars, live entertainment and opportunities for informal gatherings with others on campus. In addition to films at the Staller Center and exhibits at the Zuccaire Gallery, you’ll find a HealthierU nutrition-based ‘pop-up tent, Yoga on the Staller Steps and well-being walks. We look forward to sharing more news over the coming weeks and months. Click here to read the original article

July 1, 2021 Researchers at Stony Brook University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified the primary reaction mechanism that occurs in a rechargeable, water-based battery made from zinc and manganese oxide. The findings, published in Energy and Environmental Science, provide new insight for developing grid-scale energy storage.   Before renewable energy sources like wind and solar power can be fully integrated into the electric grid, scientists must develop advanced batteries that can store these intermittent sources of power. Researchers at the Center for Mesoscale Transport Properties (m2m), a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center led by Stony Brook in collaboration with Brookhaven Lab, are currently studying water-based batteries as a safe and scalable solution. “As we think about big batteries that can back up the grid, we’ve become very interested in using water as the electrolyte, rather than the flammable solvents that are used in traditional lithium-ion batteries,” said Distinguished Professor Esther Takeuchi, director of m2m and co-author of the study. Takeuchi, from Stony Brook’s Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, holds a joint appointment at Brookhaven Lab. “We are very mindful of environmental impact. In the rare event that something goes wrong with this technology — if a giant, grid-scale battery started to leak — leaking salt water is a lot safer than leaking something flammable.” “It’s also hard to find something cheaper than water,” Takeuchi said, expanding on the cost efficiency of deploying water-based batteries across the grid. Cost efficiency and safety were two factors Takeuchi and her colleagues also kept in mind for their latest study on the zinc and manganese oxide-based battery, as both materials are cheap, abundant and nontoxic. Scientists have studied rechargeable batteries comprised of these compounds before, but the research was widely inconclusive. “We found several papers, all published within the last few years in very high profile journals, that all came to different conclusions on what the reaction mechanism in this battery actually was,” Takeuchi said. “So, we decided to take this on as an area of interest.” To understand the complex reaction mechanism in the zinc/manganese oxide rechargeable battery, the researchers turned to the National Synchroton Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven Lab. NSLS-II is an ultrabright x-ray light source that can reveal the structural and chemical makeup of samples down to the atomic scale. There, the research team ran three rounds of experiments, one at the Quick x-ray Absorption and Scattering (QAS) beamline and two at the X-ray Fluorescence Microprobe (XFM) beamline. Starting at QAS, the team ran x-ray absorption spectroscopy experiments to probe the battery’s electrochemical changes. These results from QAS presented important yet puzzling data; there was too much current passing through the battery to be explained by oxidation state changes. “That’s when we realized we needed to do an operando imaging experiment,” Takeuchi said. Operando experiments occur while the sample is operating or as a chemical reaction is occurring. For battery studies, that means data is collected while the battery charges and discharges. Many of NSLS-II’s advanced beamlines, including QAS, specialize in operando experiments. But for this study, the research team ran two experiments at XFM, where they could also conduct element-specific imaging. First, they produced an elemental map of the electrode and electrolyte. “That’s really where the breakthrough came,” Takeuchi said. “SBU Professor Ken Takeuchi suggested that we map the electrolyte while the battery discharges, pause the experiment, and then continue the discharge. We saw that while the battery discharged, manganese was moving from the cathode into the electrolyte. The manganese concentration kept increasing as long as the battery was discharging, and once we put the reaction on pause, the concentration stayed the same.” In the second round of experiments, the team continuously cycled the battery — that is, charged and discharged the cell many times. “Element-specific imaging with high detection sensitivity is a distinguishing characteristic of (synchrotron-based) x-ray fluorescence microscopy,” said co-author Ryan Tappero, lead beamline scientist at XFM. “It’s the high sensitivity that allowed us to capture subtle differences in manganese abundance across the electrode-electrolyte interface.” “We were able to definitively see that as the battery discharged, the manganese concentration in the electrolyte increased, and as the battery charged, the manganese concentration decreased,” Takeuchi said. The results enabled the research team to determine the true reaction mechanism taking place in the battery: a manganese dissolution-deposition reaction. “We demonstrated that manganese dissolves from the solid cathode and into the electrolyte as the battery discharges, then it redeposits on the cathode as the battery charges,” Takeuchi said. “The manganese is not just changing from a solid to a liquid, but rather, it is dissolving and electrochemically depositing as a new phase.” Takeuchi added, “This was an operando-enabled breakthrough. We’ve spent years developing and testing these methods at NSLS-II. Without them, this reaction mechanism would be very difficult to sort out. It explains why there were so many contrary reports in the literature.” The researchers say their findings set the stage for pushing water-based, grid-scale energy storage solutions forward, no longer having to rely on trial-and-error-based approaches to modifying and optimizing this class of batteries. “This series of experiments is a great example of the teamwork that is required to solve large, complex problems,” Takeuchi said. “We had team members from NSLS-II, Brookhaven’s Interdisciplinary Sciences Department, Stony Brook University and our graduate students — people from all different backgrounds — putting their heads together, each contributing to get this data. Collaboration can bring great benefits to science.” — Stephanie Kossman, Brookhaven National Laboratory Click here to read the original article

June 16, 2021 In a new video, Distinguished Professor Scott McLennan and Associate Professor Joel Hurowitz of the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University talk about their experience with the Mars exploration rover Perseverance, which is on a two-year investigative mission looking for signs of life on the Red Planet. “Mars has always held out something special in the public imagination,” McLennan says. “People are looking for something that’s really exciting, and something that’s positive and something that shows we can still do things that are really important.” “Being a part of a team that’s landing something on Mars, that feeling never gets old,” Hurowitz says. “I highly recommend it if you can be a part of a team like that.” The professors discuss their work on the project, the challenges they face and the emotions they felt as they watched the rover land on a planet 293 million miles away. Click here to read the original article

June 14, 2021 The following was written by Stony Brook School of Communication and Journalism alumna Jasmin Suknanan ’18, Associate Finance Editor at BuzzFeed.  If you knew me from 2015 to 2018 when I was a journalism student, you probably remember my non-stop chatter about food, travel, and social media. Or perhaps you recall a few glimpses of me sitting in the Melville Library Starbucks — caramel macchiato by my side — working on a new advice post for my blog. I was working toward a career as a lifestyle writer, and my past internship experiences at beauty, fashion, food, and pop culture websites solidified me as a strong candidate for the job after graduation. That was 2018. But in 2020, the pandemic changed the trajectory of my career in ways I never saw coming. Two weeks after graduating from Stony Brook University, I began a fellowship as a food video producer at INSIDER, one of my dream companies. I starred in videos highlighting New York City restaurants, interviewed chefs from all over the world, produced more content than anyone else on the video side, and I took on ambitious field shoots that challenged the status quo of my team’s content (and it all paid off tenfold). So it came as a total shock when I didn’t get promoted to Associate Producer after my fellowship ended. I was distraught, unemployed, and facing off against student loan payments. Over 90 job applications later, I landed another fellowship on the editorial team at BuzzFeed, another dream company. I had applied to BuzzFeed every year since my sophomore year of college and now, finally, the hiring manager was on the other line offering me the role. I began working there in March 2019 covering, well, just about everything you see on the BuzzFeed website — recipes, Twitter and Reddit threads, celebrity trends, travel, millennial culture, and (of course) quizzes. While I enjoyed the role, I learned from the hiring manager that once our fellowship program ended in March 2020, there would be no guarantee that we would be converted into staff writers; internships in the media industry were no longer a pipeline to hire. Having already experienced this first hand at INSIDER, I took it to heart. I was determined to stay employed at BuzzFeed, which meant I needed to be ready to pounce at the first sight of an opportunity to move up. So when I saw that the market team was hiring a Jr. Writer to cover lifestyle products, I threw my hat into the ring for the role. At that point, I had only gone through about four months of my year-long fellowship. I knew I had all the skills for the market job, but it felt a little too early to just abandon the fellowship role. At the same time, I knew that hesitating could cost me the opportunity — besides, trying and not succeeding was better than not trying at all. The hiring manager for my fellowship helped me secure an internal interview with the market team’s deputy editor. And my editor at the time put in a good word since I had a knack for writing about lifestyle in an impactful way. I ended up getting the job. Our team faced massive growth since 2019 as we surpassed our goals with flying colors. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, we proved to be a huge asset to the company. The pandemic was a learning experience for everyone. As its financial toll on everyday people became more apparent, I felt lucky to still have an income and to have saved a little over the years. But I quickly realized that I had been doing the bare minimum when it came to my finances. And as the first in my family to attend college and become a corporate employee, I felt like the bare minimum wasn’t enough. I thought about the other people in my position whose financial literacy also stopped at simply paying down debt and stashing away cash here and there. We only took the steps we were familiar with, which is what our families knew enough about to teach us. I explored other ways to improve my finances and build a more solid nest egg with long-term goals in mind. I listened to financial podcasts while I worked, read personal finance-focused books, and spent my evenings researching even more about the financial topics I still had questions on. I spent almost every waking hour consuming content around finance and the more I learned, the more I loved it. I came to understand the importance of building generational wealth, especially for a first generation American in the workforce like myself. And it seemed as if others were also interested in learning about the steps they needed to take to improve their financial lives. I started to feel like teaching others everything I was learning about money could be bigger than anything I was doing on the largest editorial team at BuzzFeed. Unfortunately, BuzzFeed didn’t have a personal finance team at the time. And then — as if the universe had read my heart and knew what I wanted — our site director announced that they were looking for someone to write personal finance articles and build out a vertical for BuzzFeed. I couldn’t have emailed her faster to share my interest. Again, I jumped on the opportunity and gave myself to the process, and it wound up paying off. Without a doubt, my work as BuzzFeed’s first Associate Personal Finance Editor has given me the unique opportunity to pioneer content at a very early stage of my career while I dive even deeper into a topic that has become very important to me. Since creating personal finance content, I have gotten insight from billionaire wealth managers, women of color making waves in investing, and everyday millennials working to fund their futures. I am grateful for all of my experiences — blogging, paid and unpaid internships, the fellowship that ended in heartbreak, the fellowship that ended with a job offer, and my current role. If I could give advice to current students and recent graduates, it’d go something like this: Be flexible with the verticals you’re willing to cover. Don’t knock it ‘till you try it — you might uncover an affinity for reporting on something you never thought you could enjoy. And, that coverage could be a huge asset when it comes to finding your next opportunity. It’s easy to think that you no longer have to (virtually) attend networking events or pay attention to job listings once you have a role. But you should dig your well before you’re thirsty. Never stop learning and never stop improving. Don’t be afraid to tell people what you’re interested in. When an opportunity opens up, you’ll be at the top of their mind because they know where your passions lie. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.   Click here to read the original article