By Taylor Stewart (UAB Student Affairs Marketing Specialist)

In 2023 Jackie Alexander became the first person of color to be elected the President of the College Media Association
At UAB Student Media, there’s always something happening. Sitting at her desk, Jackie Alexander is surrounded by a conglomerate of emails, annotated notes and agendas, glitter pens, slack messages from colleagues and students, and a wall filled with cards and accolades she’s collected over the years.

Outside of her office doors, music is playing, organization leaders are planning and organizing, and students are studying for tests and coming up with fresh ideas and projects the department will embark on. She's always ready to answer questions from colleagues across campus, or students seeking her advice about their particular outlet.

The week we met was busy: in the thread of emails pulled up on her computer screen, there lay a round-trip ticket to New York City. She was in the midst of organizing the College Media Association’s (CMA) annual spring convention. It’s only been three months since Alexander attended CMA’s fall convention, where she was inducted as President. She’s the first person of color to hold the office.

Looking back on her first convention as CMA President–Alexander reflected on the responsibility she holds. Alexander felt a variety of emotions, “Stress, overwhelm, joy, pride, and a strong sense of self-belief,” to name a few. She continued, “because everything I have done in my career and in CMA has led me to this position.” The weight of responsibility not only to CMA members and the organization but also to other young people of color who may look to her for guidance is felt in every decision she makes.

CMA's Fall 2023 Convention. From left, Sacha Bellman, treasurer; Jackie Alexander, president; Bill DiNome, vice president for member training; Hillary Warren, president-elect; Joe Gisondi, secretary; and Matt Bird-Meyer, vice president for member support. Photo provided by College Media Association Facebook.

Growing up in Atlanta, Alexander remembers evenings with her mother and brother as someone grabbed the remote and turned the TV on. Monica Pearson was on the evening news.

Pearson, an award-winning journalist, was the first woman and Black person to be the lead anchor of the daily evening news for WSB-TV from 1975 until 2012. “When we decided that convention was going to be in Atlanta, I knew we had to have Monica. She’s an industry and Atlanta legend.” In November 2023, Alexander had the honor of introducing Pearson as the keynote speaker at CMA’s fall convention.

Flash forward, a few months later, Alexander was part of a virtual panel alongside Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins, the first Black woman to serve as President of the Society of Professional Journalists. Together, they discussed what it means to be the first Black women to hold leadership roles for their respective organizations. Nick Hill, the first Black station manager for the University of South Carolina’s SGTV station, moderated the panel.

Jackie Alexander, Director of Student Media pictured with Student Media students at Spring 2022 Commencement Ceremony.

From left to right: Rhys Finch, Hannah Richey, Caleb Wood, Tim Quarshie, Jordan Blankenship, and Jackie Alexander. The idea of the panel came from a previous conversation Alexander had with Hill when he was deciding whether or not he should run for the role of station manager. Hill originally reached out to Alexander as he is a student at her alma mater, the University of South Carolina. He asked Alexander how she was able to serve in a role where she might be the only Black person in the room. She knew after that conversation that CMA needed to talk about this subject in a major way.

“I want to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to showcase that we (Black women) deserve these leadership positions, and we should be tapped for them more often.”

In addition to journalism and her experiences as an advisor–her family has had an equal role in influencing her career.

Alexander’s grandmother was a sharecropper and a single mother to thirteen children, after the untimely passing of Alexander’s grandfather. When Alexander’s mother was in high school, her grandmother moved the family of 14 to Decatur, Illinois. “She was always a really strong influence in sharing with me what she had experienced and endured as a sharecropper.”

Her mother was the baby of the family, home became Illinois for her siblings, but “My mom wanted something different for her life,” so at the age of 16 she enlisted in the United States Army and served for over 20 years. She was also a single mother to Alexander and her younger brother for the entirety of her service. “Watching her move through her career, and seeing how much respect other soldiers gave her was a great influence on me.”

The women in her life continue to influence Alexander as she navigates life as a single mother while also juggling new roles and challenges within college media. “Those two people are entwined in my DNA–to keep fighting, to lead with passion, and to keep my family first.”

When Alexander began her role as director of Student Media in 2018, she enjoyed meeting the students and “learning what they were passionate about and where they wanted to see the department and their organizations go.” That season of observation at UAB was her favorite part of that first semester.

“Being at UAB and having the support from my supervisor, Patricia A.R. Martinez, and our VPSA (Vice President of Student Affairs) John R. Jones, III, Ph.D. has really made this leadership role experience easier,” said Alexander. The two leaders continue to be a major arm of support for the department when other universities consider removing student media from their campuses.

Student Media staff and students meeting with President of UAB, Ray Watts. From left to right: Dr. John R. Jones III, UAB Vice President of Student Affairs; Trevor Stewart, 2019 BlazeRadio Manager; Dr. Pamela Benoit, Dr. Ray Watts, Abani Varner-Williams, Daniel Palacios UABTV Manager; Sufia Alam, KScope Editor-in-Chief, Jackie Alexander, and Rhys Finch.

One of the challenges of working in media, especially in the age of social media, is that the tide changes every day. “It can be really difficult to predict where we’ll be in a few years, but one thing that will always be true about college media is that we are a training ground for students who want to go into media.”

From Aura Literary Arts Review approaching its 50th anniversary to UABTV’s creative films and podcasts to KScope altering from a bi-weekly newspaper to a digital newspaper and print magazine–Alexander wants to foster a community of creativity and community engagement with the hope that the students will, “take what they learned here with them when they graduate.”