Election Schedule

Nov. 20 at 4 p.m. EST – Candidate forum during online business meeting (Zoom link)

Nov. 20 – Voting opens

Nov. 27 – Voting closes

Jan. 1 – Terms begin

Candidate Forum

Student Director (2 open positions)

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

My interest in serving on the CMBAM Board of Directors began when a group of my coworkers attended a CMBAM convention. Hearing about their incredibly positive experiences and the impact it had on them gave me a deeper appreciation for CMBAM’s values and missions. Specifically, I am especially passionate about the commitment to connect student media peers across the country together, amplifying the voices of student-run organizations. Through my experience in the business department of NC State Student Media, I have developed a strong foundation in both technical and interpersonal skills. My work in sales has strengthened my ability to problem solve creatively and develop effective marketing strategies that drive results. As a customer-focused industry, I have also learned a deep understanding of communication skills, collaboration, and creating long lasting customer relationships. Serving on the CMBAM Board would allow me the opportunity to give back to the community that has been so influential in my professional and personal development. I intend to leverage my strong understanding of both the challenges and opportunities within college media to empower my peers across the country.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

As student director, my primary goal during my term is to focus on connectivity among student organizations. I hope to implement creative communication strategies throughout CMBAM that can successfully enhance student involvement. Through the use of online and other outreach methods, my aim is to ensure every student is informed about CMBAM’s opportunities, resources, networks, and organizations. Another significant goal during my term is to help bridge the gap between outlets within student media. Challenges often arise from misconceptions between teams such as advertising, editing, and publishing departments. Through facilitating ongoing conversations about these challenges, I want to help establish strong internal relationships between every student media department, allowing each outlet to run as smoothly as possible. My contributions as student director would come with every student in mind. While creating innovative initiatives, I will be focused on supporting all of CMBAM’s core values. If elected, my hope is to invite students into this community and bring meaningful service to the CMBAM organization.

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

This past convention reminded me how wonderful it is to meet and discuss trends and new technology with peers as well as celebrate the accomplishments that everyone made. The Appalachian and I have experienced so much support and friendliness from this community. Throughout my time as a CMBAM member and student manager, I’ve appreciated everything this organization has done to make business operations in student media more efficient and innovative. I started as an account executive with The Appalachian and generated a record-breaking amount of revenue post-pandemic. After my predecessor left for a job opportunity, I was tasked with rebuilding The Appalachian’s business office. With a new advisor, we had to adjust some of our operations and start restoring past relationships with local leaders and businesses. After attending the past two CMBAM conventions, my team and I realized that we could be doing so much more for our organization and community by going through a rebranding and reorganization initiative. I have six years of experience in customer service and sales with three being in student media. Throughout the pandemic and the aftermath of it, I’ve learned that resilience goes far and fosters sustainability for our organizations. Doing business the right way and taking care of our people (clients and staff) are essential for success. In my life, there is no such thing as an “off day”; My team and clients can attest to that. If I’m not in class, I’m at work. The work we do is a service to the public. We are what sustains student media along with the support of readers. As student director, I would be honored to represent students and be their voice on the board of directors.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

If elected, I would like to grow Tyler and Kristina’s vision of connecting and engaging with students throughout the year. We have such a talented member base and I believe we’re stronger and better when we collaborate. In addition to developing a Slack channel or similar platform, I’d like to work with the programming and education directors to plan more student-focused programming and start monthly virtual student socials. Appalachian State University is hosting the NC CMA conference in February 2025, so I hope to share new ideas that we gather from there.

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

CMBAM had an incredible impact on the way that I view sales, marketing, and Student Media environments. If I can help to impact others in that same way, then I would love to serve on the board. I’d also like to further the collaboration between universities and bring back different ideas back to my own office.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

I would like to implement and facilitate discussions on how Student Media can shift directions in response to larger environmental factors such as elections, policy changes, or impacts to education. These are issues that directly affect students, so lifting student voices is relevant and important to indicate a need for change. If chosen, during the Issues Affecting Students portion of Roundtables, I would bring this up and create a discussion to see how different colleges are handling these issues to give others struggling inspiration. Additionally, I would love to increase Student Engagement with CMBAM on social media by shouting out students on Instagram as they decide to attend CMBAM, effectively spreading the word about this conference and giving recognition to those attending. This would also accelerate networking across universities because students attending would be able to recognize individuals from Instagram upon arrival. By furthering the connection between universities,society as a whole will alter the way that they see Student Media and hopefully recognize just how important the students in these positions are.

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

I hope to serve on the CMBAM board of Directors in hopes of connecting with more students, professionals, and advisors within the media groups as well as improve lines of communications and relationships between the media groups.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

If I was elected for the term, I would hope to increase the engagement of the social media and create more connections between student media groups that extend beyond CMBAM convention.

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

In the environment of today, college media is a beacon within the sea of encroaching darkness. When old ways threaten to consume the new, fresh minds come to the rescue. Having the ability to renew journalism in the hearts of the institutions built to preserve critical thought and free speech is amazing, and to be able to assist in guiding new and creative ways would be a privilege.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

I had a lot of fun attending the CMBAM conference this year. There is a lot of potential there, and increasing the opportunities for those who attend to grow their own media with new and creative ideas would be great. I want to expand the resources this conference offers, increasing outreach to the many college papers, finding new sponsors to boost our ability to improve attendance and offer more opportunities for speakers to engage, and developing more creative approaches to organization, in the hopes of increasing the prestige of CMBAM and making it a recognizable name in the sphere of journalism, so that the awards and prizes handed out are truly remarkable achievements in the world of reporting and media.

Programming Director-Elect

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

A year ago I took over the CMBAM membership for our school and attended the CMBAM Conference for the first time. I really enjoyed it, and would like to help this group plus other schools.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

Looking forward to helping the conference grow in attendance and other programs.

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

I am a skilled networker and organizer and I believe I could bring a lot of new ideas for programming to our convention planning. I value all that CMBAM offers its members and feel this would be a great way to give back to the organization.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

I’d like to organize the conference and find ways to make sessions more engaging, with more activity offers and additional opportunities to network and collaborate outside of lectures.

Communications Director

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

As a new publisher last year, I was overwhelmed by how supportive and accessible other student media leaders were. CMBAM has been a great resource and I’d like to be able to give back.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

Continue Sam’s excellent work. Find even more ways to promote, remind, and solicit resources from members. It seems we’re constantly looking for best practices and new ideas. CMBAM has excellent resources. It might be helpful to have a short, simple series of posts that show how members have utilized them. For example, “here’s how we borrowed Nebraska’s metrics report, tweaked it a bit and saved lots of time.” The goal would be to increase awareness about CMBAM’s library of resources and encourage even more sharing.

Education Director

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

As a long time lover of continued learning and passion for student success I think my energy and innovation would be essential to the CMBAM Board of Directors! I truly have a passion for not only working with students but fostering their personal growth. I often think back to being a student with my communication degree in hand and not feeling prepared, so I know many of our students out there may feel the same way! If there is a way I can make a difference in not only the education and preparedness of my students here at UNC Charlotte, but in the entire CMBAM community, I will always jump at the opportunity to get involved in those efforts!

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

During my term I want to mainly set up the position with a strong foundation for the future. Since the position is new I want to bring a lot of energy to it, and put in some fun programming for students and advisors that makes them feel like there is someone on the board they can reach out to and work with in terms of student training, resources, and skillset development. Even if I dont have the cure all I want them to know there is someone out there that is dedicated to working with them, and really just be a lifeline for support. Below are some initial ideas I have for the position. However these are just initial ideas, if they do not align with your specific goals they can be altered! Tool Box Series: Once a month during the academic year, I would like to host a live workshop of different interest topics requested by the students/advisors, with input from the board, especially the Student Director. We can workshop specific issues the students may be running into. Think of it as a mini conference session via zoom once a month. I can speak to different interest topics, or schedule someone with expertise on the topic! These webinar-like sessions could be recorded and saved to the resource library for future reference, and non-members could be charged for them and provide another stream of income to the group. We could also create prizes or an award at the conference for schools that have the most students attend these live sessions throughout the year. Digital Badging: We have so many smart, intelligent students that don’t have anything to show on their resume for being a member of this organization (as far as I know of). I want to somehow build something that member students can directly add to their resume to show expertise in areas that will give them a professional edge. I want to create digital badges for the students that attend tool box sessions live. I can design, create, and send them digital badges. They can collect these and add them to their resumes. They can also add them to their e-mail signature, for when they are emailing clients and working with ad sales to show another layer of student professionalism. We could also create prizes or an award at the conference for schools/students that have the most badges! Support/help line: I want to be a resource and someone people can turn to for educational and training assistance when they are building their training over the summer and beginning of the semesters. I could essentially open myself up to members through virtual meeting requests via Calendly. I can then meet with advisors virtually and workshop ways we can improve the training and education of their students. This 1:1 time could be very valuable and helpful to people restructuring or revamping their student training. In the News: rotating section of resource library Section where there is an updated rotation of articles detailing out new news in our industry. This way it is easy to find new innovative information for our members! This is also something relatively passive that can bulk up the resource library but not be an overwhelming amount of upkeep. Maybe in coordination with the newsletter cool exciting articles can be highlighted somewhere in the monthly newsletter. Ex: Canva just went through a huge rebrand. I could have linked the article that goes over all the new features of Canva to our webpage for students to view and familiarize themselves with. Ex: Maybe there is a new trend in media for example we learned at the conference from our keynote print sales are down across the country, maybe linking some articles that talk about that and how media organizations are handling it

Secretary/Treasurer

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

I’m passionate about serving on the CMBAM Board because I truly believe in the power of college media to shape future leaders in our industry. College newsrooms are where many of us got our start, and I want to help ensure they stay strong and innovative. College media organizations are perfect testing grounds for new ideas, and I’d love to help foster that spirit of innovation while keeping the business side sustainable.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

I want to strengthen our financial transparency and reporting. I plan to create clear monthly updates for our members about CMBAM’s financial health and key metrics. This isn’t just about sharing numbers – it’s about helping our members better understand how we’re using resources to support their success. I want to develop a more robust financial planning process for our annual conference and training programs. This means working closely with other board members to create detailed budgets that maximize the value we provide while keeping costs manageable for our members.

President

Why do you wish to serve on the CMBAM Board of Directors?

I love this organization and what it does for our students and our programs.

What do you hope to accomplish during your term if elected to the position you are running for?

I want to keep the momentum from the previous year’s board. I hope to focus on our programming and conference but also the new addition of educational materials to meet the needs of more student media programs.