8 NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2018 As of this writing, I’ve now been working for the IBA for four whole months! I’ve really enjoyed my time with the IBA so far, and I’m excited to dive in further to my main role of serving our members. I had a great time at our Annual Convention in September meeting some of you while I was running around taking photos and recording video. As IBA’s member engagement specialist, I’m responsible for just about anything you can think of related to digital communications. I run all of the social media accounts, which means producing different types of visual media – videos, photos and graphics, mainly. I also produce visual content on behalf of our member banks. Some of my other responsibilities include producing IBA E-News, our weekly newsletter, and assisting with Hoosier Banker. I graduated from Indiana University in May with a degree in journalism. In the journalism program, I was encouraged to try out many different types of storytelling in order to establish my strengths as a communicator. I tried to nail down just one type of storytelling to pursue, but I found something to like in almost everything I tried, especially in visual storytelling. I thought that being a “jack of all trades” in college would be my downfall, but it ended up being a strength, as I am able put those skills to work here at the IBA. I originally became interested in communications because my high school English teacher, Mrs. Smith, encouraged me to develop my ability to write and urged me to put that talent to use. Mrs. Smith also taught journalism, so I started writing for the school newspaper. Eventually I decided that writing was what I wanted to do, and I headed to IU to pursue journalism. After a year or so in college, I realized that my passion didn’t necessarily lie in writing, but in communication in general. I began exploring other forms of communication. My experience in videography also began in high school – I learned how to film and edit videos when I was in a broadcast journalism class. I went to a small school, where we had to be creative to find news, and our main task in that class was creating a weekly newscast. We had to cater to all our students, ranging from kindergarteners through high schoolers, so we got really silly and creative with our newscasts in order to engage our full audience. Before I knew it, I was dedicating every study hall and even hours after school to making those videos. From that experience, I fell in love with creating videos. I loved seeing how video can grab people’s attention and made them laugh while still relaying relevant information. I never really thought about making videos as a potential professional skill, however, and I stopped making videos for a while once I graduated high school. I picked videography back up again in my sophomore year of college when I was involved with a Christian campus ministry called Reformed University Fellowship (RUF). I started making promotional videos for RUF events, solely because I was the only one who knew how. This experience reignited my interest in videography and ultimately inspired my professional goals. From those promotional videos I was able to get internships with Indiana INTERNnet and the Indiana Association for Adult and Continuing Education, which solidified my interest in doing videography professionally. The most important thing I learned in my internships was the value of teamwork and communication. Prior to those internships, I was always working independently. Whether it was for school assignments or small freelance jobs, I was used to relying on myself only. At times that’s a good skill to have, but now I prefer to collaborate and communicate on my projects here at the IBA – it takes so much guesswork out of the equation and gives me an opportunity to get valuable feedback. Outside of work I love spending time with my family, which is easy considering how close I live to them. I live in the third-floor apartment of my grandmother’s house, where my mom lives in the second-floor apartment, and my grandma lives on the ground floor. We each have our own spaces, but still share the same house, which is so fun. People always joke that my living situation sounds like a sitcom! For a little while my older sister, Alyssa, also lived with us before she went to grad school at IU. I’m very close with my family and I love being able to see them every day. I also have a cat, Dolly, who’s the sweetest and most mischievous cat ever. I love animals, and I had been so eager to have a pet that I adopted her as soon as I could – the end of my first week with the IBA. Dolly is black with bright green eyes, and only has three legs due to a dog attack she suffered when she was a stray. Today, she gets around just fine and is almost always running across my apartment at full speed playing with her toys. One of my favorite parts of working at the IBA is being a resource to banks that may have limited communication resources. For example, your bank might be doing a great service project, but maybe you don’t have anyone to take photos, make a video, or otherwise document or promote it. Or, maybe your bank has already completed a project, and you’d like the IBA to help get the word out to others. That’s where I come in. I love being able to serve our member banks in situations like that, and it goes to show how much the IBA cares for and wants to serve its members that they even hired me. I’m so happy to have a position that’s based on serving others while using my skills at the same time, and I look forward to connecting with more of you as I continue in this position. HB Emily Brooks Member Engagement Specialist Indiana Bankers Association ebrooks@indianabankers.org STAFF SELECTION
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