Ahoy! The YoPro team is proud to wrap this year’s YoPro Talks series entitled Captain Your Own Career. Our goal was to offer a range of topics that would be relevant to the YoPro community as you take command of your own professional growth and cast out into uncharted public media territory.
Winter
To start the year and motivate us to pull our anchor out of the wintery waters and sail ahead with more focus and direction, WNET Digital Product Manager Melissa Major presented Anchor Up With Design Thinking. She introduced us to exciting design thinking strategies and facilitated collaboration and creative thinking in small breakout rooms.
Spring
Leadership was the hot topic warming up spring, including reflections and empowering advice for young professionals from Anessa Ezuede, Director of Membership & Donor Services at Houston Public Media, Rachelle Anderson, Director of Development at WUCF, and Molly Phillips, Executive Director & General Manager at Iowa PBS. YoPro’s Annual Meeting pre-conference event, Leadership At All Levels, offered attendees a chance to bring the leadership conversation into their networking opportunities with station peers and carry it on throughout the entirety of the conference.
Summer
In June, we learned about tools and strategies for Keeping Afloat with Gretchen Brown, former editor and author at Twin Cities PBS’s Rewire. Managing our mental health while maintaining productivity has become critical while we navigate choppy waters and Gretchen deftly steered us in a more compassionate and understanding direction.
Throughout the summer we shared advice and perspective from captains at the helm of some of their station’s digital initiatives: Joshua Marroquin, Houston Public Media’s Digital Fundraising & Marketing Specialist, and Noel Stojkov, former Senior Producer & Digital Media Freelancer at WCTE Central Tennessee PBS, talked about their public media journeys and lessons learned while navigating the digital public media seas.
YoPro closed out the summer with Charting Your Course for Success, where Dani Iannelli and Max Duke from PBS’s Station Services team unpacked the concepts of goals and goal-setting. Every captain needs a map to determine the best course forward, so it’s fundamental to set attainable goals and have a plan for how to achieve them.
Fall
With fall came virtual TechCon 2021 and a thrilling game of PBS & YoPro trivia (Congratulations to winning team Julia Child’s Butter)! Like YoPro’s Annual Meeting pre-conference event, this mid-conference social event helped peers connect across the system and buoy each other through another virtual conference. We also learned a few important PBS facts along the way, like “What was the longest running series on Masterpiece Mystery!?”*
Coming Up!
The YoPro team is excited to close out 2021 with Set Your Sails to the Wind, a presentation on how to lead from where you are to push to your next destination, led by Tabitha Safdi, Chief Content Officer at South Carolina ETV and Chair of the Digital Media Advisory Council.
Your growth as a leader requires starting from where you are and using your strengths to your best advantage but also taking calculated risks that will challenge and push you one step closer to your next destination in your professional development. In this YoPro Talks, we will explore approaches to leadership and how to set your sails to the wind with the right support: your compass, map and crew! Register now and don’t miss out on this empowering conversation!
And now we look to you, mateys! Do you feel better equipped to navigate the public media seas? Let us know what YoPro can do to help you keep your professional development boat afloat. We’re always open to feedback that helps us improve our professional development offerings, so please reach out to us at YoPro@pbs.org with any ideas, thoughts or questions you have.
Anchors away,
The YoPro Team
*Answer: Hercule Poirot! This series ran for 13 seasons from 1989 to 2013.
