Office Hours

Giselle Kowalski:
Hi y'all. My name's Giselle Kowalski, and I'm the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University. You're listening to Office Hours, and today I'm here with AnaBelle. AnaBelle. What's up?

AnaBelle Elliot:
Hey Giselle.

Giselle Kowalski:
How are you?

AnaBelle Elliot:
I'm pretty good. How are you doing?

Giselle Kowalski:
Good. So you got to talk with Ali Forbes from the Department of Mass Communications. How was that?

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah, so that was my first interview I've gotten to do with Office Hours, and I felt like I was getting a pep talk. She's just such a cool person, and she has such a hunger for life. And so as I was asking her questions, I was feeling in the back of my mind, me just planning out everything I was going to go accomplish after the interview. So it was really inspiring.

Giselle Kowalski:
Yeah, she had such good motivation within her and to tell us too, she had such confidence that was so palpable, and I loved it. And you did a great job.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Thank you.

Giselle Kowalski:
So we hope you enjoy this conversation between AnaBelle and Ali Forbes.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Well, to start us off, can you please introduce yourself to us and then what do you teach here at Texas State?

Ali Forbes:
Sure. My name is Dr. Ali Forbes. I am in my third year here at Texas State. I'm an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications in the Electronic Media department.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah, I saw that you're from Canada. What part are you from?

Ali Forbes:
I'm from a small province on the east coast called New Brunswick, so it's northeast of Maine.

AnaBelle Elliot:
OK. Very cool. So now for the real stuff, can you tell me about your first job and was that where you grew up or did you travel to go start that job?

Ali Forbes:
Sure, yeah. My first job, as far as my very first job, I was working at a diner after high school before I headed to college. My first professional job was with Pepsi, actually. I was in sales at Pepsi for a couple of years. And then I took on a role as a marketing coordinator for Casino New Brunswick, which is the biggest entertainment complex on the east coast of Canada.
And then I moved from there, and I decided though I was working in communication jobs, I really wanted to work in live broadcast production for sports. And so I went back to school. I did a one-year postgraduate diploma in sports journalism, which took me to an internship at SportsCenter. After my internship at SportsCenter, I stayed on full time. So my first job in the industry was as a story editor at SportsCenter.

AnaBelle Elliot:
OK. And throughout that, did any of those opportunities come from college or can you tell us how that connected to where you went to college?

Ali Forbes:
Yeah, I would say definitely. I did two undergraduate degrees. So first at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, and then I went to the University of Ottawa and did an undergraduate degree in communications. But when I got to Ottawa U, I found the communications program. Communications was definitely my lane, and I could start to see my career kind of in my academics. So there's no doubt that my degree helped me in my role at Pepsi, and then directly my program at Loyalist College. So I did a postgraduate diploma in sports journalism. It was a formal requirement of that program to do a monthlong internship, and that internship led me to my first job. Without a doubt, I have certainly leveraged my academic successes in my professional career as much as I could for sure.
The opportunity to study my master's degree kind of came up in a, I don't know, weird way I guess. One of my college teammates is now an athletic director at Troy University. And when Troy University started to look at developing their own ESPN3 broadcast, she asked if I would come down and work with the athletics department and study my master's degree.
Well, at that time I was a little bit older. I was 28, 29 years old. I really understood that I was searching for my big girl job, my forever job, that thing that I could really throw myself into. When the opportunity came up at Troy, I thought to myself, "Do I really want to leave SportsCenter?" SportsCenter was an end goal for somebody like me who wanted to work in broadcasting for sports. But yeah, the opportunity at Troy was just that much better for me. I could see myself developing a career instead of staying at SportsCenter for 20 years as a story editor.
So I would say it was probably my master's degree at Troy University before I really started to get a real good academic foundation. And then obviously continue to grow that and develop that at Arizona State University while I was studying my Ph.D.

AnaBelle Elliot:
What was one of the biggest obstacles throughout that, that you had to overcome when you were in college?

Ali Forbes:
One that was very difficult for me. If you grow up as an athlete, so much of your identity is tied up in being an athlete. And so when your athletic career ends, the assumption is kind of just like, oh, you'll just have something that's there that replaces that, whether it's a career, whether it's a profession. So I would say transitioning away from being just a really good athlete and having to now come to terms with what does your life look like after you're done playing sports? I would say that was one hurdle for me.
The other one, I think it's not so much one specific incident, but I would say being persistent. So I think staying motivated and engaged and kind of having faith that it will work out. Sometimes when it takes a little bit longer, it's hard to kind of have that faith. So I would say one of the hurdles was continuously trying to apply yourself in different ways so that eventually you get to a point in time where it does make sense. And so I would say that was probably, not necessarily the hurdle, but maybe one of the biggest challenges was continuing to stay hungry for figuring it out.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah. And it sounds like as you're talking it through every step, you've been so intentional and that's led you to where you are now, which is really cool to hear back.

Ali Forbes:
I was just willing to do whatever. I just knew I wanted to work in and around sports. I knew that I wanted to work in television production and I was willing to take on whatever roles I needed to, to be able to get closer and closer and closer and closer. And sometimes that would be as simple as working for PGA Live, which I've done a number of times at the Canadian Open, and I would just be responsible for taking the tripod off of the cart and putting it where it was supposed to go next and waiting for the cameraman with his camera to come and set up his camera.
Well, those guys didn't know at the time I was studying my Ph.D. Those are jobs that pretty much anyone can do. You don't need to be skilled in broadcasting to do that. But I was networking. I was growing my resume. I was learning about live broadcasts from a perspective that I didn't have at my other university role. So there was always things that I could be seizing, if you will. Sometimes they were sacrifices, but they were easy sacrifices to make because I was very aware of where I was trying to go and what that general end goal might be. And it was easy for me to identify the opportunities that were going to help me get closer to it.

AnaBelle Elliot:
So how did you balance your schoolwork and then being a college athlete?

Ali Forbes:
Ooh, that is the age-old question. It's almost impossible. You have to be nearly perfect with your schedule. You could be working on projects that aren't due for weeks because you know when that time comes, you're just not going to be able to find the time that you need.
I will say if you grow up in competitive sports, you're predisposed to having to be perfect with your schedule. And so I would say that that skill just continued into college. I would say I relied very heavily on the resources that were available to me, but was also a part of really strong programs who wanted student-athletes to be successful.

AnaBelle Elliot:
When did you know that this is what she wanted to do as a career? Did you have a moment?

Ali Forbes:
One of those moments happened when I was studying communications, and I had a good professor. It was the first day of class and a professor that I had never met before, and he was up in the front of the room and he was describing what a communications professional looks like, sounds like, thinks like, and I felt like it was just he and I alone in the room and that he was describing me to myself and I had never met him.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Wow.

Ali Forbes:
So I would say there was a moment there where I was like, "OK, deep breath. I'm at least in the right vicinity. This might not be the right job, but I'm at least somewhere close to my specific lane."

AnaBelle Elliot:
What would your college self not believe about your life today?

Ali Forbes:
That I was a professor at Texas State University. This was not on my radar. If you told me anything, literally anything about my life right now to me as a college student, I would've thought that you were crazy. Now, in a lot of ways, it's better than I could have imagined. It's more. I mean, we're planning a trip to take 20 to 30 students to the Paris Olympics this summer. I'm writing a book about NBA 2K, and my hopes is Diana Taurasi is my first interviewee for the book.
I'm doing a story, a documentary right now about the 1976 Women's Olympics team. I mean, that was the first time women's basketball was ever in the Olympics. These are the types of things that I couldn't have dreamed about. Thanks to the work that I did, but now also big in part Texas State University and the support that they offer me in my work, all three of those things on their own are dreams come true. And I am working on all three of them simultaneously right now at my job. I know without a doubt that I'm in the right place at the right time because of these projects that I'm getting to work on.

AnaBelle Elliot:
What has teaching college students taught you about your college self?

Ali Forbes:
I feel like the students now, they apply themselves so much more than I did, but they seem so much more ready to start to make decisions about their lives long-term. So yeah, I would say that the students now probably recognize the value in what they're doing here. They seem a lot more in tune with where they're headed. They're here for a reason. They have ideas of what they want to accomplish, and that's so exciting. It's exciting when they don't because it means that there's opportunity to figure it out. It's exciting when they do because it means that we can put strategies in place to help them close the gap between where they are and where they're trying to go.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Do you have a motto or a mantra that keeps you motivated to continue what you're doing?

Ali Forbes:
One that plays in my head a lot, my dad's, his personal philosophy is, "Under promise and over-deliver." I am a firm believer you can only control what you can control. And things that I can control are if I show up on time or early, if I work hard, if I'm nice to the people that I work with. After we have an interaction, if I leave folks saying to myself like, "Oh, I would like an opportunity to work with her again," or if the opportunity came up, they would feel a positive feeling if my email came into their inbox, that's going to go a really long way.
You really don't have any idea where your opportunities are going to come from. If you had have told me that my college teammate was going to end up in Alabama and offer for me to go down there and do my master's degree, I mean, that just sounds crazy to someone in a small town in Canada. That's just not how things work. She knew I had a skillset. She remembered me for being a hard worker, and as a result, thought of me when the opportunity came up.
And you want the people that you interact with to think about you when these opportunities come up. And they're always going to come from places that you least expect it. That one time that you went on an internship and you shadowed somebody and you picked up the garbage that somebody else had left and threw it out, it's those people that are going to call you a year later and say, "Hey, I remember you from when you came and you did this thing for us." So I would just say that you have to always lead with, there's no magic sauce. It's hard work. It's leaving everybody that you work with with the impression that they would want to help you if the opportunity came up again, because they know that you'd be willing to do the same for them.
And you can't fake that stuff. You really have to show up early for people to think that you're the kind of person that shows up early. You really have to stay late on a Friday when you'd rather be anywhere else because two interns didn't show, and you know what that does to your producer. So control what you can control. Some stuff is out of your control and it's not always going to work out how you want it to, but the things that you can control, you can control every time, and you've got to every time put your best foot forward because you don't really have any idea where your next opportunity is going to come from.

AnaBelle Elliot:
That's some good advice. I feel like I just got a pep talk. So to someone that's trying to still find their own path in their career, what is something you would tell them?

Ali Forbes:
Keep looking. For me, it came together in my late 20s and early 30s. And even now it's still coming together. But the flip side is part of the excitement is still leaving space to figure it out. One of the things that I found most surprising, I mean, I think I was 28 when I started working at SportsCenter, but it was only when I was 27 that I had made the deliberate decision that I was going to turn a corner and try to get jobs like a job at SportsCenter. So all of a sudden you walk in on your first day and there's this mourning a little bit that happened. I'm very excited. Of course, I'm excited. I know that these are the kind of opportunities that anybody would kill for, but there's also this other element of like, "Well, shoot, if I'm at SportsCenter at 28, what am I going to do for the next 30 years? I have met my lifelong goal of being a story editor at SportsCenter. What else is there?"
Well, for me, what else is there is going to the Olympics. What else is there, is working on-site for these live events. What else is there? There's a ton of other things that are out there. So my advice would be just because it doesn't look like you thought it would on the timeline that you think it's going to, doesn't mean it's not going to happen. And the only thing that you can do is continue to apply yourself.
It's the second that you decide that it's not going to happen, that it's not going to happen. So I would just say that it's easy to get discouraged. There have definitely been times where I've wondered whether or not I'm going to be able to make these things happen for myself, but the only difference between me and somebody that it doesn't happen for is that I'm waiting for the time where I feel like, you know what? I'm not going to be able to do that. I've never felt like that before.
And that's a reflection of good support system, confidence, doing the work. That's one thing. The more work that you do, the more work that you've done. So when you're in your 20s, you haven't had enough time to do a ton of work. You get to 30 and 35, and then all that work that you've done has compounded, and you can rely on all that work that you've done as well. So I've earned the right to be a little bit confident because of some of the experiences that I've had and some of the places that I've been.
So yeah, just stick with it. It will happen. You just have to be confident in the fact that it will and be applying yourself. If you're not applying yourself, it's not just going to happen out of nowhere. You've got to make it happen, but just keep applying yourself and eventually it'll make sense.

AnaBelle Elliot:
I really am down to the last couple, so a fun one. Do you have any fun memories from teaching at Texas State?

Ali Forbes:
I love teaching at Texas State. I mean, it feels like I got the golden ticket because students come to me in an electronic media program with a wide range of production skills. Some have had a YouTube channel for 10 years, and they're celebrities. I don't know. They're viral online. Some have never opened a tripod before. I feel like I get to give them the keys to the car, right? They're here because they want to be, and there's this gap between them and what they want. And the gap is learning to produce.
And they're all different. Some of them want to be videographers, some of them want to be editors, some of them want to be on-airs, but I'm going to give them the tools to start and take it wherever they want to go. That, I mean, literally every single day is exciting to me.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah, that is so cool. Very last question. Can you give me any advice as I finish my last years in college?

Ali Forbes:
Sure. Yeah. Get into everything. In the same way that you don't know what network opportunity is going to be, what helps grease your wheel in whatever direction you're going to go, you don't know what skill it's going to be either. And so the more skill... This podcast is great that you're doing the podcast. Learn to edit video. Do as many interviews as you possibly can. Get involved in as many clubs as you possibly can, because not only are you then establishing a network for yourself of other faculty members, other colleagues, other like-minded people that are in school with you here, you're also growing your skillset and what you're capable of doing.
So school is without a doubt, the best opportunity to sink your teeth into as many things as you can. If sports aren't your jam, work for the athletics department. If you're not into theater, do a theater broadcast. If you don't have any interest in music, work with editing music because you are going to learn a skill that you will leverage to get yourself closer to wherever it is that you're headed.
So my advice to anybody who's here at Texas State right now and listening to this would be to sink your teeth into as many things as you can because you have no idea what specific skill it's going to be that'll be the key to the door that you're trying to walk through.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Thank you for that. And that's all of our questions. So thank you for telling us your story. Thank you for answering my questions. And I'm leaving feeling really motivated. So I imagine our listeners are feeling really motivated too. So thank you, Ali.

Ali Forbes:
Thank you guys for inviting me on and coming all this way over from JCK to do our interview.

AnaBelle Elliot:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Office Hours. So we hope you enjoyed this conversation. And make sure to tune in next time to learn about the experiences of our amazing Texas State faculty. And also remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube at TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the host and the guest, not of Texas State University. Once again, I'm AnaBelle and I'll see you next time.