Lauren Rigau

Get coffee. Like, get the coffee. Start at the beginning. I did 3 internships when I was in college, and it was about running scripts, it was about writing drafts of copy for radio programs, it was about getting coffee when they needed coffee. If you start at the bottom, you understand how the machine works. You need to do every job, you need to experience every functionality of comms and media in order to be the best version of a communications spokesperson that you can be. I also tell people, because I mentor a lot of young people now, I understand that now it's common practice to just go to grad school right after you finish your undergrad, but there's something to be said about going into the workforce, working, understanding different aspects of why you're doing what you're doing, and then going back to school to perfect it. There's something about that, that's - I don't know - it almost means more.

We're over-consuming media right now. It's in your face 24 hours a day, so it's almost hard sometimes to decipher right from wrong, or truth from fiction. I think just going into every article you read, going into every tweet you scan, going into every social media post that you see with perspective, and just always being able to sit back and go, okay, I'm gonna read this again with new perspective, I think will help our society as a whole, because there's just a lot of information. It's like information overload. We're desensitized to a lot of things, so if we just take a step back and recalibrate and gain new perspective, and see things from other people's standpoint - we're only as strong as we are by our understanding of other people, and their stories, and their emotions, and what drove them to do what they did, whether we agree with it or not. And now with AI, so many things can be manipulated to seem authentic. I think sometimes people, as it develops even more, people who do the job that I do, public relations, communications, media, are gonna - it's a line that they're gonna teeter on, on even believing themselves. You have to sit back, and you have to take a deep breath, and you have to just say, let me jump into the other person's shoes. Just pop into the other person's shoes, see how they would see something, and then once I've done that, I can still continue on the path that I was on, but just being able to think about something through the lens of someone else, or through the perspective of someone else for a moment, it just opens up your horizons to other people's truths.