As someone who grew up around and within the beautiful sport of volleyball, I have always flocked to working volleyball game shifts through my internship with the Mizzou Athletics Strat. Comm. Department. When I work shifts and hours during these events, I am most commonly stationed on Twitter (or X as it’s officially referred to now). My job is to post updates, graphics before, after and during gameplay, and record and post highlights from the event that I would be live streaming on Twitter Live directly from the SEC Network’s private channel. Especially with the sport being fast-paced and constantly moving, this has taught me to be quick on my feet with posts/captions, attentive to tasks at hand and ahead and to keep track of details like points, on-going statistics and more! Tap the image of an example graphic below to visit an example highlight post and @MizzouVB on X!

I was recently given the opportunity through my Strategic Communications internship at the University of Missouri-Columbia Department of Athletics to write a featured story on the return of Mizzou Gymnastic's beloved (now) fifth year, Helen Hu. Highlighted in Mizzou's Athletics News category, this story shines a spotlight on the athlete and her decision to come back to the sport of gymnastics after a year off traveling abroad to 15 countries, exploring who she is outside of the sport.

Over the course of a few weeks, I was able to curate this project with the help of my assigned director/mentor in the Strategic Communications department, research and finding prior stats and knowledge on Hu, and even held an interview with head coach Shannon Welker and Helen Hu herself. This was something that provided great experience not just in the journalistic endeavors and skills of writing a featured story, but also when discovering who these athletes really are as people outside the gym, court and arena! Tap on the image below to read the article!

Since running my high school volleyball team’s Instagram during our State Championship 2021 season (my senior season)- I have always returned home each summer to continue running the account during Metea Valley’s volleyball camps each July, and to visit my second family of alumni and coaches I have from that State team, of course! This past summer 2024 I’ve had most growth with the account…

📈 Finally broke 1K followers (currently at 1,112)
📈Have 168K accounts, and counting, interacting with @meteagirlsvolleyball on IG (with a usual average of about 700 accounts interacting every 30 days throughout the year)
📈Had one of Instagram Reels go viral at almost 50K likes and 450K plays

I really dug into my curriculum and learning from Missouri School of Journalism specifically with my experience taking their Journalism4160- “Social Media Foundations and Practice” course last year. Utilizing promotion through different outlets provided by social media platforms- Instagram, in this case. I remained active on IG stories and through posts, tagging and encouraging accounts to interact through tagging and call-to-actions. I also studied the accounts most active times to post and planned out announcements and graphics to release all the way up to their tryouts in August. My biggest and best new experience this summer being the use of reels, or small videos posted to the accounts main feed. From highlighting the summer camp players to using satirical content, it opened doors to a whole new audience and was a great help in the accounts growth in just two weeks!

In efforts for a project in my Journalism 2200- Audiences and Persuasion course, a friend of mine and sorority sister, Gabby Stellato, allowed me to cover her shocking story of her heart attack that she had the day after her 19th birthday in August 2022. This was also on our sorority’s Bid Day (one of the most chaotic days in Greek Town each year). Not only was this an amazing story to capture and listen to from Stellato, but it allowed me to gain experience conducting multiple interviews, collecting visuals to caption/convey the story, and transcribe audio into print form in the structure of a profile story. This process was elongated over a month as the instructor had us on a new focus each week of curating this entire portfolio of Stellato and her story. Click on the image to access the drive containing all elements of “A Heart Stopping Bid Day”- Gabby Stellato’s Profile Story!

As the Director of TikTok for my sorority back in my sophomore year (December 2022-December 2023), we had the amazing opportunity to help Selena Gomez and her team debut her new single at the time “Single Soon” via TikTok. She had reached out to us on our @mizzoualphaphi TikTok account, and we all were over the moon excited, especially when Selena gifted us her merchandise line and Rare Beauty cosmetics!

We orchestrated a production featuring some of our “in-house girls” at the time getting ready for a night out while incorporating dance and lip-syncing to the song. This was not only a great sisterhood event for our members but also was a big step for partnerships within our chapter!

In the fall of my sophomore year, my prompted Journalism4160- “Social Media Foundations and Practice” course had us create a social media branded account to practice branding anything we’d like. While this was a quick two week project, my creation of my self-branded social media personality @mbpilafas om Instagram is something I still am active on to this day.

This platform has provided me an outlet to curate and create digital news letters to post, learn how to advertise to/build an audience, and story tell through different topics relevant to pop culture, recent news and personal inquiries. I continued to persue this account even after receiving a grade on the assignment in that class because it allows me to continue practicing these skills that are emphasizes through the J-School here at Mizzou! Tap on the image below to visit my page!