Q&A: Gabby Fernandez, audience fellow @ The Atlantic

Announcing The Idea’s first fellow spotlight! Each year, Atlantic Media hires about 40 recent graduates for its fellowship program. Fellows are placed in editorial or business positions across Atlantic Media’s four brands: The Atlantic, National Journal, Government Executive, and Quartz.

This week, we caught up with Gabby Fernandez, a USC graduate and Internet enthusiast.

Tell us about your fellowship.

I am one of the social fellows at The Atlantic, and I do a lot of stuff. I work with syndication — I help pitch our stories to Apple News, MSN, and Flipboard, and I also do swaps with Newshour, Wired, and Vox. I help with magazine production, like putting our magazine articles online and helping format them for the web, and on top of that I help with posting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I’m kind of all over the place, but it’s fun!

What is the most satisfying part of your job?

I think the most satisfying part of my job is seeing everything come to life. I think that being on social is being on the back-end of everything. You’re helping shape how other people perceive other people’s work. It’s nice to see everything on social and see work reach so many different audiences.

What were you working on right before you answered these questions?

I was making some Instagram captions for some posts for the magazine.

What is something you’ve learned from a non-media job that’s applicable to your current role?

This is my favorite question! Before doing media stuff, I worked at Starbucks for a really long time, and I learned from working there the importance of multi-tasking, which I think is a very important skill to have as a journalist, especially on social media when you have to balance a million things at a time. I’ll never forget that.

Where did you work before you came to The Atlantic (other than Starbucks?)

I was an audience intern at Money Magazine at Time, and I was also an intern at NBC Nightly News and CBS. I also did a lot at Annenberg Media (USC’s online outlet). I also worked at Baskin Robbins.

Do you have any advice for people looking for entry level jobs in media?

Don’t give up and keep reaching out to people. It’s really easy to get discouraged when you don’t hear back because there’s always such a high volume of applicants, but even things that you wouldn’t traditionally think of being helpful on your resume — like working at Starbucks for example — can take you so far because so many skills are so transferrable.