Missouri School of Journalism to recognize 62 students at Dec. 13 graduation ceremony
The Missouri School of Journalism will recognize 62 students at the 4:30 p.m. commencement ceremony on Friday, Dec. 13, in Jesse Auditorium. Seating is open and no tickets are required.
A link to a live stream of the ceremony will be available on the MU Graduation and Commencement Live Streaming page.
Graduate degrees will be awarded to 8 master’s students.
Of the 54 undergraduates, 29 focused on some aspect of journalism; 25 on strategic communication. A total of 32 graduates earned Latin honors by achieving at least a 3.5 grade point average for the last 50 credits.
The top 10 percent of the School’s graduates will be inducted into Kappa Tau Alpha, a journalism honor society founded at the Missouri School of Journalism in 1910. The KTA reception will be held from 10 to 11 a.m., Friday, Dec. 13, in the Fred W. Smith Forum, Room 200, in the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. The 11 new members of Kappa Tau Alpha are:
- Master of Arts: Anna Bonderer, Joy Angelica Mazur, Deborah Pastner, David Tallant and Tanya Wilmeth
- Bachelor of Journalism: Breanne Chamley, Olivia Grace Afia Gyapong, Claudia Anne Hagen, Maggie McCready, and Caitlin Reynolds
The alumni speaker is Jamie Sohosky, BJ ’93, the Chief Marketing Officer for Bath & Body Works. With nearly 25 years of global marketing experience, Sohosky leads the marketing team, leveraging customer insights across channels to accelerate business growth and differentiate the brand’s customer experience in the marketplace. She has led Bath & Body Works into a new era of customer segmentation, launching the loyalty program as well as a successful Netflix partnership which resulted in unique product collaborations with Bridgerton and Stranger Things.
Prior to joining Bath & Body Works, Sohosky served as Chief Marketing Officer for Bass Pro Group and was a marketing executive at Bed Bath & Beyond, where she led the brand’s marketing transformation. Adding to her significant retail experience, Sohosky was a marketing leader at Walmart for over 12 years. There, she focused on strategy and brand positioning in the U.S. market and led Walmart’s digital expansion into online grocery pickup and delivery services. While at Walmart, she also led Marketing & Media at Asda in the UK and led the buildout of the international marketing team for India.
Sohosky spent eight years with the Campbell Soup Company in the UK and started her career at advertising agencies supporting global brands like Nike, Jim Beam, and Tropicana.
The master of ceremonies will be Adam Busack. Raised in Denver, Colo., Busack is heavily involved in campus radio station KCOU 88.1 fm, where he served as assistant General Manager for the 2023-24 academic year. He was the 2024 recipient of the Becky Diehl Award for Outstanding Leadership in Mizzou Student Media, KCOU’s umbrella organization, for his efforts in the station. He currently covers the Missouri football program for the School’s Missouri News Network’s community paper the Columbia Missourian, and enjoys traveling, cooking, and long walks on the beach. Busak is graduating with a Bachelor of Journalism degree with a concentration in reporting and writing.
Olivia Gyapong will present the “Thoughts of the Class.” Orginally from Silver Spring, Maryland, she is a Stamps and Walter Williams Scholar at Mizzou. Gyapong is graduating with a Bachelor of Journalism with a concentration in reporting and writing; and a degree in political science. She also earned a minor in constitutional democracy as well as the Honors and Multicultural certificate.
On campus, Gyapong has been active in the National Association of Black Journalists student chapter, the Little Sisters of the Gold Rose service sorority, the Kinder Institute’s Society of Fellows and Undergraduate Society, and undergraduate research. She has also been a MizzouRec staff member and has participated in student and professional publications on campus.
Gyapong has interned with WAMU 88.5 and the DCist, the Arizona Republic, and Bloomberg Industry Group. During her study abroad semester in Brussels, Belgium, she interned with EU politics and policy outlet Euractiv. She also attended the 2023 POLITICO Summer Journalism Institute.
After graduation, Gyapong will be returning to the D.C. area to work as a policy analyst at a government relations firm, putting her writing and political science skills to work.
Olivia Gyapong, BJ ’24, “Thoughts of the Class”
“Keep your focus.” This was advice I heard time and time again from my journalism professor and Missourian editor, Liz Brixey. Liz would repeatedly utter this to rein me in when I inevitably tried to squeeze three stories into one, striving to include everything I had gleaned in my reporting when there simply wasn’t enough space. What did the reader really need to know? What were the most important bits? Keep your focus.
As we gather here, at our graduation ceremony, Liz’s advice takes on a whole new meaning. I’m confident we have each spent countless hours brainstorming the perfect wording for a MOJO or AdZou campaign; adjusting the nat sound levels on a KBIA piece; framing and reframing KOMU shots. We’ve spent late nights and weekends at the Missourian covering everything from high schoolers’ homecoming football games to city council elections. We’ve stressed over social copy and whether we’ve gotten enough detail shots for photo essays.
It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of the everyday. It’s easy to get engrossed in our coursework, our grades, our jobs. It’s easy to stress over portfolio reviews and deadlines. But I think Liz’s advice to keep your focus applies to life after graduation as well.
While making good grades in graduate school and getting your thesis turned in on time is important, and while excelling at work and pleasing your boss can pave the way for promotions, it’s important to remember to not lose sight of the bigger picture.
When we leave here, we probably won’t remember that one communications law exam we flunked, but we will remember the movie nights-turned-sleepovers with that one friend we made during Summer Welcome and never stopped talking to. We will remember screaming our lungs out at Faurot Field with our sorority sisters or fraternity brothers. We will remember how that industry tour we took with our pre-professional organization led to an internship the next summer. We’ll remember these things because these are the things that truly matter, that have comprised the formative experiences of our time here at Mizzou. These are the important things: the lifelong friendships, the networking connections, the lessons learned outside of the classroom.
We all know journalism and strategic communication are stressful fields to go into, but it’s important that we keep our focus on the big picture things that really matter. The work we’ve been trained so well to do here is important, but so are our family, our friends, our loved ones, our mental health, our happiness.
Our beats will change, our clients will come in and out of our lives. One day, far in the future, we’ll retire. Our careers will be but a chapter in the full story of our lives. When it’s time to turn the page on that chapter, we can’t have lost the plot. We have to keep our focus on the most important aspects of our life stories.
Jamie Sohosky, BJ ’93, alumni speaker
Good afternoon, students, faculty, parents.
What an honor to be here sharing this exciting milestone with you today. It feels both like yesterday and a million years ago since I was in your shoes. The University of Missouri is not just my alma mater. It is a piece of me. My parents, my uncle and my sister went to school here, I met my husband here and now my son is a freshman taking his first journalism class. I’m so proud to tell people I graduated from THE University of Missouri J-School.
So how did I end up here? As a young girl, I listened to the way my father spoke about his time at the J-School, his stories from the Sporting News or campaigns from Grey Advertising. I was fascinated by how his eyes still lit up with each story, each memory passed along. I didn’t yet understand how profoundly the university experience shapes the person you ultimately become.
When my dad passed away, I was only 10, but I think at that moment, subconsciously, I was drawn to find that same glint of light for myself. I am grateful to have found it here at Mizzou and to share that with him and with all of you.
What an impressive group of graduates here. Some of you may already have jobs lined up, some may be headed to graduate school, and some may still be searching for that first opportunity. What you have in common, I’m sure, is that you are eager and proud to walk across this stage and receive the piece of paper that will propel you into the next chapters of your lives, whatever those may be. I also know that you probably have some level of apprehension, nervousness or uncertainty. That is normal. As you prepare yourself for these new challenges, I want to share some advice I wish I’d had early in my career.
As I reflected on my time here and where I am today, I realized that there were three core things that being a student here taught me. First, I learned the importance of remaining deeply curious, second the benefit of finding your community, finally, the confidence to take chances.
First, stay curious. It is certainly a trait that is critical for a journalist in today’s world. I’ve also found it useful every single day of my career and in life. By staying curious, you can learn something new every day. It’s fun to learn something new everyday, right. Today I learned…..
You can stay curious by reading everything, listening to podcasts, observing your environment and even going down the rabbit hole on Tik Tok.
The most important thing you can do to feed your curiosity, is to ask a lot of questions, including my favorite “why?”. And ask it five times – you’ll learn a lot. I either learned that at J-school or when I was three according to my mom. And then listen, truly listen. Each perspective, idea and opinion that you take in makes you better. Makes you smarter. Makes you more creative and flexible.
When I was at an agency, I worked with Procter & Gamble when they were looking to acquire a pet company. In assessing the opportunity, I talked with many pet owners. It didn’t take too many “whys” to get to some pretty touching and funny stories about what pets mean to people. They are companions, entertainment and sometimes the only thing that gets people through hard times. I also learned that you can dress your dog in just about anything and a baby carrier can, in fact, accommodate a cat. So asking why was entertaining, but also very useful as we built a case for leveraging P&G’s expertise in beauty, oral care and parenting to win in a lucrative pet care market.
The second thing I learned here was to find, build and nurture your community. I spent many long hours at The Heidelberg, Ellis Library and at the J-School with my classmates working on projects, quickly finding each person’s strengths and laughing. A lot. You will find as you embark on your next chapter that having a good network of smart people to support you, bounce ideas off of and tell it to you straight will be a difference maker. Invest in these relationships. Know that you are better together, not better than each other. And find those people that make you laugh. A lot.
Third, take a chance on you. This means saying yes to new opportunities. Even those opportunities that don’t seem obvious. Sure, there is something to be said for staying the course, making a plan, and persevering through tough times. But it can also be incredibly rewarding to say yes to something that doesn’t feel ‘right’. It might feel risky, and not the obvious next step. You might not think you are actually up to it. But someone does. Someone believes in you.
What you need to remember is life isn’t linear. Careers aren’t linear. Careers are journeys, not destinations. They are a collection of experiences that allow us to build on our skills, meet new challenges, and see the world in new ways.
My career wasn’t a straight line. It was a lot of zigging and zagging. My first job was not the job I wanted, but it served me well. I met smart people and learned what I was good at and what I was interested in and, ultimately, it led me to where I am today.
After working in the advertising agency world for five years, my husband and I had the opportunity to move to the UK. That was an easy chance to take – a no brainer. I was interviewing to work for the iconic Saatchi and Saatchi agency in London. Bam – what a perfect step on my agency career ladder. At the eleventh hour, I got an offer to work for the Campbell Soup Co in the UK, and all of a sudden, I had this big decision to make. Do I choose the job at THE leading ad agency or lean into working for an American company I could stay with if we decided to move back one day? I took a chance on Campbell Soup. I took a chance on me. I took a left turn. That decision changed my career path – and my life. I stayed in the UK for eight years, traveled the world, and had both of my sons there. Would that have happened if I’d chosen Saatchi & Saatchi? I don’t know, but I do know that taking chances and making unexpected left turns has enriched my career in ways I could never have planned.
As we all know, the world is changing every day, and you won’t always be able to anticipate what life will look like on a personal--or global scale. And that is ok. The destination is unknown and really doesn’t matter. If you are like me when I was sitting in your seat, it is easy to get stressed about making sure your next move is right, is perfect, will make others proud. I wish I could tell my graduating self to not worry about the first move. It is just that – a first move on a long journey of exciting experiences. Remember if you stay curious, build your community and take chances on you by saying yes – you will enjoy that journey. And that’s really the most important thing.
So let me take this opportunity to congratulate you again. I know you will be as proud as me to say YOU are a graduate of THE University of Missouri Journalism School. The best in the land.
Updated: December 16, 2024