Rachel Rodriguez

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT RACHEL RODRIGUEZ

My career has been all about embracing the intersection of journalism and technology. I\'m passionate about telling important stories and connecting with audiences in new ways, and empowering others to do the same. I spent more than a decade at CNN, where I ran the international social media programming team and co-led the US social media programming team. My teams and I had a proven track record of growing audiences: We more than doubled traffic to CNN from social in 2020 and grew unique users from key commercial markets by 62%. We also launched CNN\'s presence on multiple emerging platforms. Before that, I was part of CNN\'s social newsgathering team. We were one of the first dedicated social teams in the industry and I\'m still called on today to speak at conferences and universities about growth, ethics, and experimentation in social and digital media. While at CNN, my teams and I received some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including a Peabody Award, Edward R. Murrow Award, Eppy Award, several Webby Awards, an Emmy nomination and others. In 2021, I moved to Facebook (now Meta) to lead the US news curation team out of London. We\'re responsible for programming the best news stories of the day for the Facebook News tab as well as advising on content across the company. In this role, I\'ve levelled up my product and data skills, working cross-functionally with teams like product, engineering, content design, user experience research and operations to launch new products and activations around news and creator content. But perhaps most importantly, I believe strongly in making the media and tech industries accessible to new and diverse voices. That\'s why mentoring up-and-coming journalists, particularly women and non-binary people, has been a big part of my career, both in my jobs and through outside volunteer programs.