The Beginning
Picture it, Kansas City, Mo., 199—
I grew up as an imaginative and creative child who loved to make people laugh and was a social butterfly. I explored my creativity by writing my own stories and excelling in most creative writing assignments.
These qualities eventually manifested into my decision to become a journalist during my sophomore year at Grandview Senior High School. I served as the Opinion | Entertainment Editor of the student newspaper, The Student.
MIZ—
Enter Mizzou. While in college, the journalism industry was ever-changing as it adjusted to the digital era. At the Missouri School of Journalism, I trained to be a multifaceted journalist, earning a degree in emerging media that prepared me for the ever-evolving media landscape.
While I earned my Bachelor of Journalism, I worked as a Multimedia Producer at Vox Magazine and a Writer at Newsy.com. But during this time, my crowning achievements were serving as Committee Chair of the National Association of Black Journalists — Mizzou Chapter, and becoming the Editor-In-Chief of The BLACKout.
The BLACKout was founded during the Civil Rights and Black Power era in 1969, revitalized as a news website by Victoria Uwumarogie and Veronica Wells in 2009, and then run by Gabriel C. Tyler and me, covering Black student life, current events, and culture.
NABJ Baby Takes on Big Apple
The summer between junior and senior year was crucial. I set out to intern in New York City, and with the help of an NABJ fellowship during the summer of 2011, I interned at TheGrio.com during the website’s NBC News days. Later that summer I did the National Association of Black Journalists’ student projects, with the online news team in Philadelphia.
Being both an intern and fellow in NYC in the summer of 2011 wasn’t only significant to my budding journalism career but my identity, as it was the summer I came out as gay and started to come into my own.
I’m Going Going Back Back to New York, New York
My love for New York only grew after interning in the summer of 2011, and I made the conscious decision to return to live there and start my professional career after graduating from Mizzou in May 2012.
I saved money for six months after graduating, eventually making my grand return and grinding as a part-time server and part-time freelance journalist (The Huffington Post, MadameNoire, etc.), intersecting narratives about pop culture, marginalized identities (Black and LGBTQ+ communities, among other experiences), and social issues.
Looking to elevate my career in community engagement and social media journalism, I joined what is now known as the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY M.A. in the engagement journalism program, which as I previously wrote, “recasts about journalism as a service to help communities reach goals and solve problems through the following principles: listening, building relationships and trust, engagement, community collaboration and finding solutions to a public’s needs.”
My community practicum (capstone project) centered on the Movement for Black Lives. At the beginning of 2015, media attention surrounding #BlackLivesMatter mainly focused on Black male victims of police or state-sanctioned violence, while the movement focused on the intersectionality of Black identities and experiences impacted by systemic racism. This meant the movement was for ALL Black lives and lived experiences. Enter a solution to this issue: Black Narratives Matter, a project centering on how to go in-depth and cover an array of Black experiences from tracking police killings to health disparities to environmental racism to the BLM’s wants out of the 2016 presidential election.
At CUNY, I mastered community-based social listening, relationship-building, and engagement and collaboration with communities. I even used engagement journalism to bridge communities, such as facilitating conversations between Black journalists and Black community organizers in BLM.
Not only was I able to successfully apply engagement journalism during my internship in the politics section at The Daily Dot, but I also carried that work into a major career breakthrough.
The Big Break
There have been numerous instances in my career when I have had the opportunity to help create something new and innovative, especially while working with media startups like The Tylt.
In the spring of 2016, three months after graduating from CUNY, I became one of the first editors of The Tylt, an online polling platform designed to give online communities a voice to share their opinions by voting on a range of two-sided debates using hashtags.
I applied engagement journalism to running The Tylt’s top section, entertainment, and to engaging with music fan armies and geek culture fandoms.
While I held the roles of Entertainment Editor to Deputy Editor/Senior Fandom Editor, I also became known by the honorific title, “The Breaker of Tylts.” Yes, I challenged The Tylt website’s infrastructure on multiple occasions due to the massive amounts of fan voting on an array of polls—like “Favorite K-Pop Boy Group: BTS or EXO?” in 2017 to “Best Pop Icon of the Decade” in 2019. This was a feat even some of the startup’s incredible team of developers couldn’t stop.
At The Tylt, I created “Stump Deron” in 2019 (where my vast pop culture knowledge was put to the test); “Streaming with The Tylt” (a series centering bracketology where TV fans got to vote on their favorite shows across genres via Netflix); The results were ranked and called “Tylt Recs.”
Also, I launched Fiercely Fandom with Deron., a podcast dedicated to how pop culture meets fan culture.
While I got to do some cool, experimental, interactive, and innovative work at The Tylt, the outlet was discontinued in September 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next, I worked as a Managing Producer, Trending | Social at PennLive, another Advance Digital property based in Pa. There, I brought in thousands to millions of page views by writing about an array of trending topics, from stimulus updates to “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Since my days at Advance Digital, I have freelanced for Everyday Health, writing about Black experiences with health disparities and mental health awareness. Also, I got back into project management, leading a team of 16 copy editors to proofread a website migration for the law firm Weitz & Luxenberg.
What’s Next?
As it goes, I’m in a rebuilding phase, gearing up to have my Sailor Moon moment like Storm in “X-Men ’97.” IYKYK.
Hence, I’m open to work.
If my career trajectory in this bio proves anything, I can adapt, experiment, innovate, and outperform as an engagement-driven digital media specialist.
And you best believe I’m bringing my multifaceted skill set to the table—emphasizing my unrelenting passions for content marketing, writing, editing, project managing, podcasting, video production, social media production, and community engagement.