I’ll be honest—there’s not a lot of Postmodernist fiction or 18^thcentury poetry in my day to day. I barely touch the topics that formed my coursework. But I’ve never taken a very academic approach to my studies and my career; I’ve just always gravitated toward fields that feel more like pleasure than work, and I’ve always loved dissolving into stories and discovering the many ways to communicate emotion and set an enveloping scene. But my major was just a small part of my learning.

The amazing thing about Cornell is the breadth of quirky things available to study across the different colleges—from the Hotel school, to Human Ecology. Everyone seems to understand that life-enriching topics are just as valuable as the standard curriculum. I plowed through my “academic” coursework and so I could spend my last year taking classes like wine tasting, Italian, travel & tourism and a study of opera. And because world-class experts teach the courses, it’s not just fluff—you learn to be critical and analytical, and you begin to understand the business and cultural impact of lifestyle industries. That was fascinating to me.

At some point in my teens—after I told my parents I wanted to be an interior designer and was promptly shut down, which is funny in retrospect—I got it in my head that I wanted to be an editor at a women’s magazine. I would read the editor’s letters in YM and Sassy (R.I.P., dear mags!) and imagine writing stories and collaborating on shoots and layouts. When it came time to get summer work experience, I was already living in Boston and applied to the only two lifestyle-type magazine internships I could find here. Thank heaven, I got both gigs. 

Both were really eye opening. For the first time, I had to learn how to select and filter content for someone other than myself, on totally unfamiliar topics. I was in no way an expert in holistic health, but had to interview herbalists, yogis and acupuncturists at Natural Health and distill an hour-long conversation into a 150-word blurb that our readers could use. At Pohly, I was writing articles for airline passengers, collection agency employees and travel agents. I quickly realized that writing and massaging copy was only a fraction of what lifestyle editing is about. It’s all about channeling your reader, selecting great content and ideas on her behalf and presenting it in a way that inspires.

As with my studies, I’ve always leaned toward work that doesn’t feel like work. I’ve never felt the need to climb a ladder or beat the competition; I just want to create compelling written and visual content that makes people say, “I want to learn that/see that/go there/taste that/bring that into my home.” Personally, I’ve learned tons from magazines and lifestyle media: how to cook, how to renovate my homes, how to deal with the challenges of pregnancy and parenting. And I’m not alone: We’re relying less on tight circles of moms and aunts and neighbors to walk us through these things, and we rely on lifestyle media and Google searches to tell us what to do. I know how much of an impact this content can have, so in a way, I’ve made a career of paying it back.

I made the leap to freelancing after quitting my job at Whole Living, the wellness magazine at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. I had been at that gig for several years covering beauty and green living, and I craved flexibility and the ability to write about other topics like dining, décor and travel.

Starting out, I pitched article ideas to contacts I’d made through my previous gig, such as colleagues who had moved on to edit other magazines. Since there was built-in trust, it wasn’t like cold calling and asking a stranger to hire me. I tried to pitch ideas every month or so, whether or not the previous ideas had been accepted, as a way of reminding the editors I was available for assignments. I used networks like LinkedIn and Facebook to let folks know I was freelancing, and pretty soon projects started coming to me—like a book project for National Geographic. Work could be sporadic, however, so I kept detailed records of pitches, assignments and invoices to ensure I was lining up enough work to cover my expenses and re-pitching rejected ideas to other outlets.

Tenacity is key. And once I decided to take on a full-time editing position again, I kept freelancing on the side. It’s great to keep those lines open.

Joss & Main was only a few months old when I came on board, and they were looking to create a content experience for their members through an online magazine, Plume. They wanted to leverage their access to great designers and curators via Q&As, to present how-to stories and generally put more ideas in front of their members. I was coming from Boston Magazine, where I led lifestyle content including weddings, travel, shopping and home, so I knew the space well. Even better, I had come to specialize in short, tip-oriented prescriptive content, so it was a good match. 

As managing editor of content, I was primarily focused on getting Plume off the ground. But it quickly became clear that there were other areas of the business that needed help as they grew, such as photography. As a startup, we were really winging it with a makeshift photo studio in a conference room and a bare-bones team, and we didn’t have a ton of space or props to work with. I started to pipe up with suggestions, and soon I was part of the daily critique loop. I was also weighing in on our event concepts, brand copy and more, so it eventually just became part of my job. The great thing about working at a startup is that roles are really malleable, and if you’re vocal about your interests and aptitudes, you naturally get folded into new projects and initiatives.

Like everyone in décor, I adore Pinterest. But no matter how much of our world goes online, my richest source of inspiration is still print. I devour shelter magazines, home catalogs, etc. Print forces you to pause and examine the details. I also like to look outside my industry—at hotels, store windows and product vignettes. You see a lot of new and interesting ways to showcase shape and color, and to grab people’s attention as they walk by.

And, of course, there’s my own home—it’s kind of a laboratory for me. I’m endlessly renovating, and like my customer, I’m always designing and redesigning rooms in my head. I spend a lot of time thinking about how someone puts together a great, personal space that works for real life—the challenges and the rewards.

I’ve never been much of an analyst; my gut is my guide. But I’m lucky—because my work and life blur together so much, I do trust that my own experiences reflect the customer experience. If I can’t find what I want on a certain section of our site, how can our member? If there’s a site feature I crave, someone else must, too. And fortunately, I’m checked by a team of incredibly sharp, data-oriented analysts and marketers. If I have a hunch about whether a type of product, message or look could work, we can run tests, analyze the returns and decide whether to pursue it further. 

I’ve always been incredibly attentive to detail. I can pinpoint spices in a complex dish, or match a paint color based on something I saw in a store. I mentally catalog images and products we’ve featured on our site. So I’m somewhat preconditioned for this job. 

My advice would be to follow your strengths rather than dwell on your weaknesses. If I had spent all my time at Boston Magazine trying to compete for crime stories with the investigative journalists, or forced myself to learn complex data pulls at Joss & Main, I wouldn’t have the time to explore new looks and identify things our members might like. Surround yourself with a team that complements your strengths, and don’t be afraid to be opinionated. Everyone has a unique perspective.

All of the credit goes to our buying team on this front—they do an amazing job of sourcing product and onboarding new suppliers, which we can then tap to include in events based on the looks and rooms we’re presenting. What I really do is feed them ideas for new trends and looks that I think will resonate with our members—looks that walk the right line between classic, fashionable and charming. I also help to refine the specific selection of products we’ll feature in our site imagery, hand-select items to be featured in editorial emails, like our Friday Night Finds, and create broad concepts for seasonal campaigns. 

I look forward to creating more lovely things—to making our site prettier, more customer-friendly and more inspiring each day.