Ivy Tech Indianapolis

Simply put — Shakkira is the Ivy Tech Indianapolis storyteller. As the director of content marketing at the largest singly-accredited campus of the largest community college in the United States, story ideas are plentiful. But, it’s what you do with those stories — and how you share those stories — that is of the utmost importance and vitality to the campus’ identity. Shakkira is behind the telling of the higher education journies of our remarkable students, innovative staff and faculty, inspirational alums, and generous donors. During her time at Ivy Tech, Shakkira is perhaps most proud of securing consistent media coverage by crafting timely, compelling narratives that elevated the institution's profile; pioneering cross-channel content strategies to creatively unify messaging across mediums; leverageing storytelling to directly influence enrollment growth; and uncovering and sharing the following impactfuls stories that helped steer the aformentioned:

The rise in enrollment of homeschooled high school students YOY;
Profiles of entrepreneurship students, such as Danielle Lewis;
The career pivot of an adult learner from baking to HVAC;
A mother who walked in commencement on behalf of her late son who passed before he could grab the diploma from the chancellor himself;
The inventive urban gardening class that mixes English and gardening into its classes;
Ivy Tech Indy’s first-ever 500 Festival Princess;
A student who saved the life of a man after a traumatic fall in traffic (and subsequently celebrated by the Pacers & Fever);
An alum, together with the Hospitality program, helps create an innovative new cooking program at the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired;
Senior Scholars, Pat and Carol-Ann, still enrolling in classes in their 70s.

The director of content marketing is perhaps most proud of her time reconfiguring Ivy Indy, beginning with the magazine’s second edition; revitalizing two internal newsletters, The Voice of the Bear, which went out to a circulation of 28,000 students, and Ivy Indy in the Know, which was sent to over 1,000 staff and faculty members; and spearheading the campus’ very first external newsletter available to the community, the Ivy Indy Community Chronicle.

WRTV

Shakkira has reported on thousands of stories across several beats at WRTV. While working her way up in the Indianapolis newsroom — starting her 4-year tenure as a digital content producer, quickly becoming a real-time digital editor, then becoming a digital enterprise reporter cultivating a new kind of role for the outlet — you can see her byline on articles involving everything from crime and entertainment, to many topics in-between.

Shakkira is most proud of her time jump-starting three projects at WRTV: Inside Indy, We’re Open Indy, and Indy Black Businesses. Here are just a mere few links and videos to some of her enterprise, data, investigative, and feature work:

Musical genius of Herman Whitfield III 'was a gift to the world'

The Arizona Republic

Although most of Shakkira’s time at The Arizona Republic (azcentral) was spent learning how to curate chatter and make social graphics and videos, it was through her time on the social media desk she quickly learned how to spot trending news and turn it into an article, garnishing pageviews. Her favorite, and perhaps most valuable, assignments while working in this Phoenix newsroom were live reporting on Twitter and Instagram from rallies, speeches, long lines to get into a highly-anticipated restaurant, and even following her colleagues on a story, showing our followers how they do their reporting work.

NUVO

NUVO was the underground, the niche, and the alternative voice of Indianapolis. For more than 30 years it served those who valued community-driven journalism, the quirky and giving the voiceless a voice.

Medium

Shakkira is a literature lover at heart and a passionate creative writing aficiando. Medium was an early way for her to put some of her writing out (after a couple of blog attempts, of course!)