2024 Career Panel: multi-media journalist, alumni success manager, head of operations, non-profit founder, sci-fi novelist
English Department Career Panel with guidance from industry leaders and Fordham alums
Our speakers give you cutting-edge guidance on how to plan for a rewarding life and career post-Fordham.
SPEAKERS
Carrie Berk is a high-energy, creative, multi-media journalist with a proven expertise in reporting, writing and editing stories that engage audiences. Bestselling author of 22 books. Contributing writer for HuffPost, Newsweek.com, CBSWatch Magazine, New York Post, Page Six and others. She has extensive knowledge of social and digital media creation, growth and analytics.
Kevin Greene is a 2016 graduate from Rose Hill with a degree in English and sociology. He went on to get an MA in English from NYU. While in graduate school, he worked as an elementary school teacher in Manhattan, before transitioning in 2019 to teach high school English at Coney Island Prep in Brooklyn. For the last year, Kevin has served as the Alumni Success Manager, running CIP's Pride Promise scholarship program. This includes managing upwards of $2 million of funding per year to minimize student loan debt and providing counseling to support CIP students through college. He is also an active writer, with poetry, fiction, and critical essays appearing in a variety of publications over the past few years.
Michelle Malonzo is currently the Head of Operations at The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary and was previously a buyer at Changing Hands Bookstore in Arizona. Michelle has served on the board of the American Booksellers Association (ABA), as well as the ABA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, and the board of the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. She received the 2021 BIPOC Bookseller Award for Leadership as well as a 2020 Bookselling Without Borders Fellowship, and was a judge for the 2019 Kirkus Fiction Prize.
Melanie Trinidad, Esq. has spent nearly 20 years within the healthcare industry learning the business, serving as a lawyer and compliance professional, trusted business advisor, and counsel within the biopharmaceutical sector. Within that time, she has helped launch life-saving medicines, transform research start-ups into commercial companies and support the marketing/sales of their products. With the skills and knowledge she gained throughout her career, paired with her passion for youth development, she founded a non-profit organization and is currently overseeing governance, marketing, content, partnerships, and communications.
Nicole Valentine (https://www.nicolevalentinebooks.com/) is the author of the middle grade, sci-fi novel, A Time Traveler’s Theory of Relativity. She earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches writing workshops at the Highlights Foundation in Honesdale, PA. As a former chief technology officer, Nicole loves science and enjoys pondering the times when science falls short of explanation and magic sneaks in. When not engaged in fictional world-building, Nicole can often be found with a hawk on her arm or a needle and thread in hand.