by Skye Saunders
Purchase graduate Sheyla Navarro Samaniego talked, via Zoom, with the CDC about her career path as a bilingual journalist.
Samaniego’s career began as a student in Peru. Her grandfather influenced her to become a journalist by giving her a newspaper to read at a young age.
“Being the underdog, and starting covering the stories and making a change, I was fascinated by all the work that was done in Peru,” said Samaniego.
While growing up in Peru was tough for Samaniego, she would watch the news every weekend to see the journalists and would say to herself, “I want to do that” and thought about working at CNN.
Samaniego was curious about every aspect of journalism, whether it was with writing, television, radio, or even the web. While being at Purchase she took several different courses and internships. Her internship was at LMC Media, where she learned a lot of technical skills.
Samaniego’s internship helped her learn what she lacked from classes. At her internship, she would work with the camera, editing, radio, writing and even podcasting. At LMC Media, she also learned photoshop, illustration and other talents in the Adobe Creative Suite.
“They were the base for getting up and landing my job at the network,” said Samaniego.
LMC Media prepared her job at Telemundo. At Telemundo, Samaniego worked at the entry-level, but they were very impressed with the skill set she had picked up at her previous
Along with working at these internships, Samaniego was thought bigger than the average student. She took a course that involved setting up news packages. Putting together these packages, Samaniego began creating a WordPress website. She started adding things like projects, and articles. Developing her own site would eventually lead her to a new career path.
“After eight interviews over the phone with different CNN Producers, I got a CNN internship,” said Samaniego.
Samaniego became a production assistant at CNN News Day until her boss from LMC Media found her on Linkedin. Her boss offered her a new position to create a new show from scratch in three months.
It was 2013, she just graduated and she needed people for the show, so she called on her friends and they were down to be a part of it.
Her show was a community-based 30-minute news segment. She started off small, not even having graphics, but in the end, she produced about 211 shows.
“It was a show that gave me the confidence that I didn’t have,” said Samaniego.
After Samaniego produced her show, she wanted to do more in the aspect of helping others. Her passion for helping others transferred over to the consumer and investigative department at Univision 41. She worked in the consumer segment where people call in and ask for help.
Along with work experiences, Samaniego also has awarded achievements. She has won two Emmy Awards, one for a series of reports about people trying to fight for housing and the other was fighting for Labor Rights.
Samaniego currently works for Univision 41 Nueva York as a line producer. “ I think it’s such an amazing career and an amazing tool to make a change in this world,” said Samaniego.
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