We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amelia Edelman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amelia below.
Amelia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?
Thankfully there has finally been a push for greater diversity and inclusivity in corporate America, and magazines and digital publications are no exception. However talking the talk and walking the walk are very different things, and we’re not there yet when it comes to the latter. Employee interest groups for folks of color and LGBTQ+ employees are all well and good and certainly help kick-start that sense of community and safety at work. But when C-suites are still dominated by white people, particularly white men, there’s only so far a push for DEI lower down the ranks can go. I recently chose to leave an editorial position where I was tasked with dictating the editorial approach of a brand for Black families, and to rein in what the Black editors and writers were publishing for their Black audience. This is just not something I’m comfortable doing as a white person, nor does it jive with my ethics as a journalist. Yes, I was a manager and in senior editorial leadership at this company—but why wasn’t a Black person appointed to do this? Because there were no Black folks in senior editorial leadership there, period. There lies the problem, and it’s far more widespread than this one company.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
As an editor, editorial director, and writer I’m something of a generalist in terms of “beats’ but I do have a particular love of and experience in storytelling in the travel and parenting spaces. That said, I’ve also covered everything from personal finance to home design. I pride myself on being a versatile wordsmith who can improve any copy, whether or not I’ve created the first draft myself. I especially love it when I’m hired as a copyeditor or proofreader, because it’s so fun and easy for me to receive a draft and immediately see all the must-have fixes as well as the nice-to-have edits that make it shine and get the message across even more clearly.
I actually started as a speechwriter and letter-writer; my first editorial gig out of college was at NYU, while I was getting my MA in English. I wrote a lot of donor thank-you notes, plus some speeches beginning “as we look to a future of academic excellence…” all on behalf of the dean of the Medical School or the president of NYU. It was not a thrilling job but definitely got me in the habit of word-shaping that has served me for the sixteen years since then.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I have long had a love-hate relationship with social media, but at this point it’s mostly love, which I’m proud of. As a student at Vassar in 2004, I was one of the first group of college kids to get what then was known as The Facebook (#tbt) but I fell out of love with it fast (once everyone’s older relatives joined and started ranting about politics, probably), quit after a few years, and never looked back. I’ve also had fleeting or halfhearted relationships with Pinterest and Twitter—the latter of which remains helpful for me as an editor when I want to put out a mass call for pitches or particular essay/news takes from writers. But that’s about it for those platforms and me.
Instagram is another story, and what started as a few travel photos with my baby circa 2015 has definitely grown over the years to a real platform and community of parent travelers, which I love. I was a single mom for many years, and the #singlemomtravel hashtag got me quite a few connections and features, and then when I launched my own series of parent-child city guides called Mom Voyage in 2017 while I was working at SheKnows, that was another crystalizing topic and fun to share monthly when the guides came out. I started doing a few Q+As and sharing travel tips with parents via IG. And when I started working on a bunch of Meredith magazines in early 2021 and doing travel coverage on Travel + Leisure, Parents, and Real Simple, things grew from there. Today as a freelancer I’m still on Instagram most days, although I now use one of those IG-control apps called Clearspace, which only lets me onto the ‘gram for 10 minutes 3 times daily. Moderation in all things, you know.
As for advice for social newbies, one thing not to overlook is the quality of your visuals. I was definitely over-confident on Instagram at the start, like “I’m a respected journalist, I work for XY and Z publications, people will follow me for my travel tips!” (Like hell they will, dear 2015 Amelia, because you are posting a blurry photo of the Taj Majal and you overuse the Walden filter. I’m sorry.) Learning how to take better iphone photos and investing in a few photo editing / collage / font apps (I’m a diehard for A Color Story and Unfold although I know folks love Canva too) was definitely worth it.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn my own preconception that the bigger, higher-paying, more demanding managerial job is always the better one. I’ve spent my whole career Achieving with a capital “A,” gunning for the next big thing, which usually, to my younger self—who grew up without any parent who worked a salaried job—looked like whatever next promotion I was up for in corporate America. I spent nearly 20 years convincing myself that I NEEDED a salary, benefits, and a 401K to…exist. Turns out, that was my trauma talking!
By the time I really climbed the ladder in corporate editorial leadership, succeeding and getting the next promotion and the next, and making more money than I ever had, I realized that often, once you get to the top, two not-great things start to happen. One, you’re no longer using the skills that got you there; I was planning high-level strategy and attending senior leadership conferences, but I was rarely brainstorming stories or editing actual words—two things I love doing and am very good at, which is why I got this far in my career in the first place. And two, when you become a business leader in corporate America, you’re pressured to prioritize business goals above all else, period. And don’t get me wrong, I am great at prioritizing business goals; again, my skills here got me very far over the years. But when you’re managing a large team who are all burned out and frequently quitting, and those business goals keep increasing exponentially and come at the cost of team members’ health and wellbeing (team members being the human resources you’re also trying to invest in as a business)…well, it’s not a new story. Constant turnover of employees is not a great way to run a business, and I’d much rather make less money and/or forgo benefits as long as my work life feels sustainable and the humans I’m working alongside feel treated fairly.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ameliaedelman.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ameliaearoundtheworld/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amelia-edelman-86a07b39/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/apedelman