{"id":11,"date":"2018-01-23T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T00:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/?p=11"},"modified":"2020-04-21T23:52:46","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T23:52:46","slug":"hewitt20180118","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/2018\/01\/23\/hewitt20180118\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrea Hewitt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Andrea (left) with her wife Jennifer (right) and their 3 kids (2017).<\/p><\/div>\n

Andrea currently works at\u00a0Red Nova Labs<\/a><\/span>, a tech company in Kansas City.\u00a0 She met her wife, Jennifer Townsend, at Truman.\u00a0 \u201cI like to tell people that between us we graduated with three majors and three minors. I just don\u2019t specify that she\u2019s responsible for two majors and two minors.\u201d\u00a0 Andrea and Jennifer are fostering 3 kids (1, 2, and 3-years-old!) for a year.\u00a0 \u201cWhen I\u2019m not working or parenting, I like to dabble in wood working. Although, if I\u2019m not using a saw, my kids are usually involved in the wood working. Every 2-year-old should know how to stain a table, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

What year did you graduate and what was your concentration?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I graduated in 2012 with a concentration in Journalism.<\/p>\n

What extra-\/co-curricular activities did you do?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My main focus outside of studies was the\u00a0Index<\/a>. I started as a reporter my freshman week and was Editor-in-Chief my senior year.<\/p>\n

Did you go to grad school? If so, where?\u00a0 Was it immediately after you left Truman or did you wait?\u00a0 Why?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ha, no. I was ready to jump into the workforce.<\/p>\n

What was your first job after graduation?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

My first job out of college was as a staff writer at a family of B2B (business-to-business) veterinary magazines.\u00a0\u00a0I started the Monday after I graduated.<\/p>\n

What work do you do\/What are you doing now?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"After a year and a half at the veterinary magazines, I realized I wanted to stay in Kansas City and I didn\u2019t feel like there were many opportunities in journalism.\u00a0 I looked for other writing jobs and I landed at a tech startup.\u00a0 For the last two-and-a-half years, I\u2019ve been a project manager\/business analyst\/product owner (we don\u2019t care much about titles).\u00a0 To put it simply, I\u2019d say my job is to define what project our software engineering team is going to work on and then follow that project through the development cycle.<\/p>\n

What I love about my job is that I wear many different hats.\u00a0 No two days look the same. I\u2019m collaborating with sales, design, accounting, marketing, and developers all the time.\u00a0 Without my experience running the\u00a0Index<\/a>, I never would have realized (albeit much later) that this is what I love doing.\u00a0 I still use skills I learned running the Index every day at my job.<\/p>\n

How has your Liberal Arts\/COMM education helped you?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I took an accounting class as one of my general credits (I can\u2019t even remember the title of the class now). The product I primarily work on is a POS\/CRM software, so that introductory accounting class that I thought I would never use, is the foundation for a good chunk of what I work on.<\/p>\n

Which class did you dislike at the time you took it, but now you\u2019re grateful you took it?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

COMM 382: Communication Theory<\/a>. I absolutely hated it at the time. The material was so far out of my comfort zone that instead of studying, I wanted to just shut down. Nothing clicked. But it was a class I had to pass if I wanted to graduate. It forced me figure out how to wrap my head around the content. This happens all the time now. I\u2019m working in the technical field without a technical background.<\/p>\n

What was your greatest accomplishment at Truman?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I had Dr. Yaquinto for\u00a0COMM 349: News Reporting and Writing<\/a>. Going into our first assignment, she said something along the lines of, \u201cDon\u2019t be upset when I give you 1000 edits on your first article. No one gets it right the first time. Even the most experienced writers see a ton of red on their paper.\u201d A week or so later, she came into class with our graded assignments and told the class there was one perfect assignment \u2013 the first in all her years teaching the course. It was mine. I\u2019m not sure if that was really true. But it spoke highly of all the great mentors I had at the Index over the years.<\/p>\n

Why is Truman a good place for a student to study?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

You\u2019re surrounded by incredibly smart and motivated people. There\u2019s nothing like it. I was really spoiled by it and very naive going into my first job thinking everyone was that driven and intelligent. I promise, they aren\u2019t. I\u2019m so lucky to have been working at a job for 4 years where it\u2019s the same caliber of peers as at Truman.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Andrea (left) with friends from the Index (2012)<\/p><\/div>\n

What would you say a COMM student should\u00a0absolutely<\/u>\u00a0do while at Truman?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Work for a media outlet<\/a>. You can\u2019t learn anything in the classroom that prepares you for life like working on a real product and driving it to be more successful than it was when you joined.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give someone who wants to go into the same line of work as you?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Do it. Technology is an ever-growing field. Find a start-up and be there while they turn into a real company. Then you can have the perks of a company that makes money (high salary, great benefits), but also the perks of a start-up (ping pong, barista).<\/p>\n

What do you miss most about campus\/Kirksville?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

How cheap rent was. My mortgage is 6 times what my rent was there.<\/p>\n

If you could come back to Truman and teach a class for a semester, what would be its title and what would it be about?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Just one? That\u2019s hard.\u00a0 How about \u201cBridging the Advertising Revenue Gap?\u201d\u00a0 It would be about ideas on how media outlets can sustain revenue using advertising sources other than their website. For example, by offering management of Google PPC campaigns as an advertising package.<\/p>\n

If you would like to hear more of Andrea’s story or would like to learn more about the Department of Communication, contact us!<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrea currently works at\u00a0Red Nova Labs, a tech company in Kansas City.\u00a0 She met her wife, Jennifer Townsend, at Truman.\u00a0 \u201cI like to tell people that between us we graduated with three majors and three minors. I just don\u2019t specify that she\u2019s responsible for two majors and two minors.\u201d\u00a0 Andrea and Jennifer are fostering 3 … Read More →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50608],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-watdn"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1915,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/1915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.truman.edu\/commspotlight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}