Alisa DeLargy

I would attribute my success to my parents. From a young age, they taught me a lot of foundational morals and values that I have stuck to throughout my personal and professional life. That goes back to giving it my all and being loyal, thinking everybody else first. It all comes down to those morals and values that they instilled in me as a kid. These foundational principles have guided me through every aspect of my career and personal relationships.

The best career advice I've ever received is to eat the elephant one bite at a time. Basically, even in the most stressful moments you have in your work environment, you need to take it just one small step at a time, and you'll get through it. That has been sage advice for me with the job and the amount of hats that I wear. Another piece of advice that guides me is that all boats rise together - teamwork is important. If we're all in the sea and we're all in our own little boats, the tide comes in and goes out, but we all rise together in that sea, so working together is the most important part of the career. Those are the two pieces of advice that I live by most through each and every day.

This is an ever-changing landscape and environment, so my advice is to not be opposed to change or to pivoting in your thinking. That is what is going to make you successful - being agile and open to where industries are going to lead you. What is today is not going to be the same as it is tomorrow, with technology and AI and things that are being developed. We all have to be open to what the future holds. The ability to adapt and embrace change rather than resist it will be the key to thriving in this industry.

In our field, we are dealing with legacy readership and users switching to digital. The biggest challenge is how we pivot to continue to attract and interest the young, digital-only audience that we have today. When I first started in this industry, everybody needed a business card - they pulled it out and handed it to you. Now, business cards are a thing of the past. You share your phone number, and if you have a business card at a networking event, what do you do with those? They end up in the trash can. So, how do we as a society pivot from having so many things that we were used to having in paper form to digital, and how do we continue with that industry so that we don't lose opportunities? Everything that I have ever been involved in is a design project or a publication that is going to go to print, and now we have this generation of kids who don't read the news in a newspaper. Kids are going to school and they don't get books anymore - they get computers with everything on their computer screens. It's this transformation from having everything go through this digital world that we are living in. The question is, is there too much digital first? Is everything tied too much to our phones and computers? How do we as a society work through that?

I always want to make sure that I have given all that I can to my job, to my family, and to my friends. It's very important to me that nobody thinks of me without thinking, 'Oh, she's given it her all,' and doesn't question that. I'm very loyal and have tremendous genuineness in every action that I do - it's for the best interest of everybody around me. I think team first, I think business first, I think family first before myself. It's very important that everybody knows that I'm giving them everything that I can. These values of loyalty, giving my all, and putting others first guide everything I do.