The Innovators

The Innovators speaker series was funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation and brought six media innovators to the Gainesville campus over the course of two years: 2014 - 2016.

Co-chairing The Innovators committee was one of the first major projects I undertook in my career. It was hugely exciting, rewarding and intimidating. From I learned two very important lessons that I still carry with me: Representation matters. Begin by asking questions.

Representation Matters

In 2013, when we began planning the series, I scoured every popular publication on digital innovation to compile a list of potential speakers. When I presented the first list, my co-chair said to me, “Kay, we don’t want this series to be The White Men.” I went back to the drawing board.

At that time, it wasn’t that women and people of color were not digital media trailblazers; it was that the vast majority of venture capital went to white men. We had to be more deliberate in our search because we wanted our students to see innovators who looked like them. That is how you change the status quo, and I continue to carry that lesson with me.

Begin by Asking Questions

Each speaker visited campus for roughly two days; it wasn’t simply one grand speech and they were done.

When we began to think about their itineraries, one committee member suggested we ask them what they wanted to get out of the visit. We conducted phone interviews with each speaker and asked questions like, “What topic or research area fascinates you the most?”; and “What is the biggest challenge in your job that you are facing right now?” These questions informed a richer agenda that benefitted both the visitor and our campus community.

I used The Innovators for my case study when I received my Accreditation in Public Relations (APR) in 2017.

View the complete Innovators case study (PDF).