Q&A: Lora Kelley, Customer Marketing and Growth Fellow @ The Atlantic

Each year, Atlantic Media hires around 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.

Tell us about yourself. What do you do?

I am a fellow in New York on the customer marketing and growth team. I started in February with the January cohort, and I work on various projects to try to inspire people to subscribe to The Atlantic and then make them feel really loved once they do. I write copy for marketing projects, I answer customer emails, do research, etc.

What were you working on right before this call?

Right before this call, I was working with my manager Anna Hoffman and some product people in DC on the brand new knowledge base. Basically, it’s a new, revamped customer help center on the website that just launched yesterday. It’s something we’ve been working on a lot the past few months, so very excited about that!

What kind of research do you do?

I’ve done a few research projects since coming here — mainly competitor research, so looking into competitor subscription models. I did a research project about how different podcasts engage their audiences and membership programs.

My team works a lot on the Masthead membership program, so some of my research has been related to that.

What did you study in school or what kind of roles led you to this job? Is it something you wanted to do coming out of college?

In college I studied art history — a lot of my previous internships were actually in art museums and auction houses and art-related things.

I also wrote for my college newspaper and was an editor, I’ve done an internship in publishing before, so I heard about this fellowship program through a friend and thought it sounded very cool. I’ve always loved The Atlantic, my parents always subscribed, and so I threw out an application and got really lucky. I’ve been loving it.

What’s your dream job?

I feel like I’m always switching around what I want to do. My original dream job, especially in college, was to be the director of a museum. But I have been very much loving working in media, so I think running a publication in some capacity would be awesome. Or just having a podcast.

I run a newsletter with my friend Sarah from college, who was actually also a former fellow at The Atlantic, so it would also be great to just work on our newsletter Meatspace full time.

What’s one of the coolest things you’ve gotten to do since the fellowship started?

I got to go to a Black Panther discussion with Lupita Nyong’o and Ta-Nehisi Coates and some of the actors. It was very, very cool. It was like The Atlantic x Black Panther. I ushered people in and directed them inside, but that was a very exciting thing to get to do and that was in the first month of my fellowship.

Do you have any advice for undergrads or recent grads looking for entry level jobs in media?

What I did was just cast a wide net, and so I think that I would recommend that others do the same and just see what works!