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Andy: Welcome to Meadows on the Mic, the official podcast of the SMU Meadows School of the Arts. I'm your host, Andy Draper, part of the Meadows marketing team and podcaster extraordinaire. On this show, I'll be bringing you in-depth interviews with Meadows faculty, students and staff covering everything from events, special guests and anything else you need to know happening at SMU Meadows.

On this episode, I interviewed Cristin Espinosa, who's a member of the Meadows marketing team and an SMU alum. Cristin graduated from Meadows with a degree in journalism and a minor in Arts Management in the spring of 2020. Cristin talked with us about her time as an SMU undergrad, entering the workforce during the pandemic and how she came to be a member of the Meadows marketing team. Let's get to know Cristin Espinosa!

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Andy: Cristin, welcome to the show.

Cristin Espinosa: Hi, thank you for having me.

Andy:  So, today's guest, Cristin Espinosa, actually works for the Meadows Marketing Department. We're going to be talking with her about her experiences on the team. She's also an alumni of Meadows and she did her undergraduate here. So, we're going to be talking about that experience, her experience in the workforce after graduation and then coming back to work at Meadows.

So, let's start off by talking about your current position at Meadows in the Marketing Department. What do you do? What's your title? All those sorts of things.

CE: Yeah, so my official title is Content Strategist for the Meadows marketing team. Most of my job is social media-related. I manage all the different social media channels we have under Meadows, which is a lot because we have numerous divisions, from theatre to dance and everything in between. I manage the various student workers who run socials for those accounts. I also manage two student workers who work specifically for the Meadows main social media channels. It's really fun – I get to strategize and brainstorm cool trends happening on social media and figure out how we can apply them to Meadows. This helps us connect with prospective students, current students, grad students, and more, using all our channels to promote everything Meadows has to offer.

Andy: Right, so a lot of social media work. And another aspect that many people may not realize in any kind of marketing department is that you, like myself, are part of the brain trust. We brainstorm as a team for all different kinds of content – for web, social, video and email.

CE: Yes, yeah, I also run our "This Week at Meadows" weekly newsletter that goes out every Monday. And that's an assortment of things. It includes events that are happening on campus and recent articles that we've put out as a team and my spotlights that our coworker, Emma England, does a great job of writing. So, it's a mix of email as well as some media strategy. And then I also do write some of my own news articles since I come from a journalism background and storytelling is a big part of what I do and what I enjoy. I also really love researching and interviewing students or faculty or brainstorming new ways that we can share really cool events and things that are happening on the Meadows website.

Andy: That's great – a huge asset to the team! I wanted to back up a little bit now and talk about your background. Where are you from and how did you come to first go to Meadows as an undergrad?

CE: Yeah, so I was born in Houston, but I've lived most of my life in Frisco, Texas. It's a really cute little suburb north of Dallas and went to high school here in Frisco. And then after I graduated high school, I went to community college at Collin College. It's a really great community college that allowed me to use transfer credits to then get to a four-year university. And so, I applied to a few, but I always had my heart on SMU. I had applied for them as a senior in high school, but it was waitlisted because I applied a little bit late. And also, it was just timing was a lot going on that senior year.

So, I went to Collin and I learned a lot there. I took some great English classes and writing classes in high school. I had done a lot of broadcast journalism and theatre – I was always someone who really loved telling stories and writing and public speaking and things like that. So, journalism kind of became my focus and what I decided I wanted to study in college. So, through Collin, I was able to get this amazing full scholarship for transfer students that they only give out to like 10 people a year, which is amazing, to SMU. So, I was able to earn that scholarship and transfer in 2018. So, I did junior and senior year I did at SMU as a journalism student and as a minor in arts management.

Andy: And what attracted you to the program at SMU over other schools and colleges?

CE: Yeah, I think a big part of what drew me to SMU was that it's a smaller school. It's private. I love that there were smaller classes that got to meet some of the professors while I was touring the school. And I loved the facilities as well. The journalism department at SMU has this amazing broadcast studio with professional equipment and everything that they would use in a real broadcast studio. And yeah, great equipment, great computers, amazing professors and everyone just seemed really friendly. And it seems like an environment that would be great for learning and also just making friends and finding a community of other students who were passionate about writing and passionate about journalism.

Andy: Right, right. So, you did two years at Collin College, two years at SMU Meadows. What was the first thing you did or what was your first position job after graduation?    

CE: Yeah, so well, I graduated at a pretty crazy time. I graduated in 2020, right when the pandemic hit. It was basically in March of my senior year at SMU. And I finished out the last semester remotely. And then it was kind of a crazy time. I did some applying for jobs, but I decided to ultimately continue educating myself through grad school online with Arkansas State University. They have a really amazing program that focuses on digital media and media management. So, I decided to do that and focus my studies on digital media, social media.

And while I was in grad school, I got this amazing internship with the Texas Observer running digital media, social media for them. So, I ran their newsletters, I contributed content to social media and social media strategy. And it was a great internship for me to kind of get my hands dirty. I had done some really awesome internships with SMU as well. The journalism department at SMU partners with the Dallas Morning News. So I had gotten some journalism experience while in undergrad as well in a really amazing professional user environment. I got to actually go to the Dallas Morning News office and have a desk there, work with my editor for the Food Section I wrote for the food column there. So yeah, after graduating from SMU, I was basically just continuing on building on the really amazing experiences I had here.

Andy: So, I wanted to touch on kind of being the food correspondent. Do you have any go-to places in Dallas in the city that are just your favorite that you got to write about?

CE: Oh my gosh! Yeah, I got to write a little bit about places in Frisco and places in Dallas. I wrote about the Frisco farmers market where there are a lot of really awesome small business owners who do great baked goods and things like that. I also wrote about some amazing dessert places throughout Frisco and Dallas. Oh my gosh, there's this place called Somisomi that's in this amazing Asian inspired food market here that does amazing soft-serve ice cream. I'm a huge foodie and a big sweet tooth. So, it was really fun getting to really profile these awesome local business owners and really cool spots I enjoy.

Andy: Right, and Dallas is definitely the kind of city that has that diverse food scene.

CE: Oh, for sure.

Andy: So, after we're doing some internships and working with the Dallas Morning News, what attracted you to come and work for SMU Meadows to join us in the marketing department?

CE: Yeah, I thought it was a really exciting opportunity. I believe I found a position on LinkedIn. What drew me to it was really that I wanted to dive deeper into marketing. The position that I had right before coming back to work at Meadows, I was working at KERA, which is the local NPR/PBS station in Dallas. And it's an amazing nonprofit media organization. I had so much fun working there. I was a digital producer for the show called “Think.” It's a really great talk show with Kris Boyd, who's an amazing interviewer. And she reads all kinds of books and articles and interviews guests who are really just incredible experts in their fields. And it was everything from science to technology and news. And so in that position, I got to meet really cool people and also got to work a lot more in social media and digital media in the news landscape.

But one thing that I really found that I wanted to get more into was that digital strategy aspect of my job and more of a marketing aspect. So I decided to look and found that Meadows is hiring. And it's an amazing school and I've heard great things about it from those who have worked there. And after going there too, I figured it would be a great place to work and to learn more about marketing and audience development, digital strategy and all that.

Andy: Well, and one thing you may not know is that your position didn't exist before you got it, that there was someone who had left the team and we decided to kind of reassess and look at our needs and restructure the team and create a new position that address things like primarily social media. And that could also help out with other team needs like writing articles, like email marketing. And so it was a very unique situation where we had to create this position kind of anew and you're a very good fit for it.

My next question was, how did your undergraduate experience at Meadows and your work experience, how does that influence how you do your job now? Now that you're on the team, you're working, you're writing, you're planning, how does all that influence what you do day to day?

CE: Absolutely, it's a huge influence I think being able to take what I learned and what I experienced as undergraduate student at Meadows and now working for Meadows where I basically am who I was as a student is who my target audience is now which I think is great. It gives me great insight into what students are looking for in terms of just relatable content but also things that they want to learn, things they want to know about, things they want to hear about on social media and newsletters and on the website. So, I think it gives me great insight from that perspective of just knowing exactly who my target audience is and what they're looking for and how to really speak their language and communicate with them.

But I think also just the skills, the hard skills that I learned as an undergrad had a huge influence on what I do now. I learned. video editing skills, photography skills. I had a great class taught by Jake Batsell who teaches digital journalism. And he also has, he works with the O'Neill Lecture, which is a business lecture series as well. So, it was a great, you know, experience for me to get those hard skills about how to kind of bring marketing and journalism together in the digital sphere. And yeah, it was a great experience that I use the hard skills I learned in undergrad all the time now.

Andy: It's very interesting how in just about every job, the kind of diversity of job skills just really influences the work. It's rare that you're going to have a job where you just do one thing. Most jobs require you to have expertise in like three different areas and then maybe some just knowledgeable about a few. That's just kind of the modern workforce.

CE: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's something that I've come across in every job that I've had while in undergrad and after is that I'm really doing a mix of all kinds of digital strategy and digital content between newsletters, copyediting, writing, blogs, audio editing, video editing, photography, social media copywriting, social media strategy, analytics. It's really been a huge variety of skills all kind of fall under that umbrella of digital marketing and digital work, but it's really fun and exciting. It's all kind of connected and related, all of these different skills, but I've found that a lot of jobs nowadays that are in the marketing or in the journalism sphere all kind of have these similar skills where they're all related and connected, but it requires a huge amount of creativity and skill to do all of it.

Andy: So, what are some differences you're seeing now? You said you graduated in 2020, so four years later, what are some trends or just some practices that you're seeing on the things like social media? You know, what was happening in 2020 and how is the landscape different now?

CE: Oh my gosh, yeah, I think the pandemic changed really everything in every industry, but especially with digital and social media, I mean, we've been seeing for years since the 2010s and since the start of Instagram, we've seen people who are just your everyday person who are influencers make their own content and share their own stories, but I think something that I've seen a lot more of with big companies doing is making more fun, lighthearted content and making content that's kind of inspired by trends that influencers create. I've seen huge brands like Duolingo and even things like the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post on their social media feeds, storytelling in a more fun and less serious way. And I think that was something that regular people kind of had to do to just cope with the pandemic and to make light of things. And I think it's something that has stuck and has made a permanent stamp on social media and digital media culture is storytelling in a way that it's just engaging and fun with audiences that keeps with trends, but also really makes things personal to a company or an organization's audience. I think that's huge, that personalization and that really knowing who your customer is and how they talk and how they tell stories in their everyday life and kind of speaking their language is huge.

Andy: Right. It's amazing how much things can change in such a short time. My final question is what advice would you have for SMU undergrads, Meadows undergrads as they approach graduation? Maybe you're a junior, maybe you're a senior and graduation is just around the corner, going to be heading out into the workforce soon. What advice would you have for them?

CE: Absolutely. I think my biggest piece of advice was to really just take advantage of all the amazing resources that SMU has, especially in Meadows. We have this amazing new program where mentors who are alums can partner up with you and coach you about, you know, redoing your resume, your web portfolios, help you with interviews, and give you advice specific to your career path that you're going towards. I think that's a huge resource that students should definitely take advantage of and also just get as much experience as you can. As an undergrad, I really would have been lost if it wasn't for student media and really participating in that.

You know, I worked with as a student executive producer for the SMU-TV and then also did a lot of writing and editing for The Daily Campus and I was also able to get social media experience through them as well and those are things that I think student media and student orgs within Meadows are so good about is helping you to gain experience and skills that you can use for after you graduate.

But also, I think I would just also advise people to really reach out to those like student orgs and resources that can help you just connect with new people and make friends. As a transfer student, I think that was one thing that, you know, was scary when I first transferred is how am I going to meet new people and create that kind of community and that sense of belonging here at this new university and I think student organizations, you know, student media and different resources we had here on Meadows are such a great way to meet people who can really help you throughout, you know, your school experience and also after. I'm still great friends with a lot of the amazing people who I met through student media and they could, you know, they'll be friends for life and they'll also be people who will be there to help you as you're transitioning from university life to the workforce too.

Andy: Right. So, it's about resources, resources, resources. That are available to you using those, both in people, mentors, equipment, all those sorts of things.

CE: Absolutely.

Andy: All right. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for being on the show.

CE: Thank you! Thank you for having me.

Andy: And you can find Cristin's work on the Meadows website, on our social media channels, and even in our email marketing and web articles. Thank you so much!

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Andy: Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in to Meadows on the Mic. And a big thank you to Cristin Espinosa for coming on to the show. Her contributions to the Meadows marketing team are invaluable. You can see her work on display on the Meadows website, social media channels, and if you're lucky, you just might end up in one of her interviews, articles or video projects.

This podcast is brought to you by the SMU Meadows Marketing Department and is available on all major podcast platforms. For questions and comments, email us at and follow us on social media at SMU Meadows on all major channels.