Q&A: Vita Dadoo Lomeli, 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 your position and what you do.

I’m a fellow on the customer marketing and growth team. I basically do a little bit of everything. My main responsibilities are reporting on all the subscriber revenue production, from our print production to our Internet production, but I also take care of everything from invoicing, to competitive research, industry trends, and also collaborate with our copywriter on different projects.

What were you working on right before this?

I was creating a report for the performance of our insert cards for our direct mail campaign.

What is the coolest thing you’ve gotten to work on since the fellowship started?

Everything that has had a collaborative aspect to it, particularly all of the projects lead by the growth and product teams. I’ve gotten to sit in on a lot of conversations about our business strategy and have learned the variety of ways in which all the different parts of the business are connected. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet several editors, writers, and directors whose work I’ve seen and admired in the past. Pointing them to my collection of spicy Mexican candy in the growth kitchen has also been really cool.

What is something that you learned in a non-media job that’s applicable to what you do now?

The things that I’ve learned the most is how to best communicate and ask questions, whether you’re in a leadership role or in and more in an apprentice role, and learning what you need to do and the resources you need to have access to in order to do your job to the best of your ability.

What is your dream job?

One dream job would consist of teaching and writing about literature, particularly literature of diaspora. I’m really interested in the ways in which literary traditions are created, the stories they tell, the voices they exclude, different forms of national myth-makings, etc. Also teaching a class on reggaeton or glam would be very fun.

What led you to this fellowship?

As a senior in college with a literature background, I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school, until I came across this fellowship in my college’s Handshake platform. I was not sure what the fellowship entailed, but I was certain that I wanted to do it, so I hopped on the phone with fellowship alumni, submitted an application, spoke to Sam Rosen and Emilie Harkin about a lot of things, and here I am!

What’s the best advice someone’s ever given you?

To be patient. I think my mom tells me this every day since I was five but it is finally beginning to resonate.

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

The best advice that I could give is just reach out to people that work in media for informational interviews. Media as an industry is so big, and I think there’s a huge appeal to working in it but there are always so many things you can do. So leveraging what your actual interests are and whether there’s a job for it, or if there’s a job that you can extrapolate from your interests. Also, I think it’s important to think about what you want to learn and take that into consideration when applying to any job.