Amanda Richie Terzian

Mrs. Syracuse turns focus to heart health, STEM

AMANDA RICHIE TERZIAN DEDICATES HERSELF TO THE NEW STEM GOES RED INITIATIVE

Jason Klaiber

Photo by Lisa Rossi Photography

Even though her career trajectory has largely landed her in journalistic endeavors, heart health has been at the back of Amanda Richie Terzian’s mind all the while.

As a lifelong running enthusiast, having participated in 32 half marathons and six full ones, the current Mrs. Syracuse places an emphasis on keeping in shape and staying active.

Not only that: she also takes into account how cardiovascular disease runs in her family.

Her mother lives with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, while her father began having heart murmurs in his late teens. Later he found himself unable to make it a full city block without becoming exhausted, at which point he discovered he had aortic valve stenosis and would need a pacemaker.

“There were no ifs, ands or buts about it that heart health and education was going to be my mission going forth,” Terzian said. At the beginning of this year, she became the chair of the Syracusebased STEM Goes Red initiative, part of a countrywide undertaking by the American Heart Association centered around the encouragement of young women who wish to enter the STEM field.

Though STEM wasn’t always on her radar, Terzian had helped the not-for-profit association raise donations in the past.

Without forcing young learners down the STEM path, Terzian said she wants to connect high schoolers, college students and recent college graduates who show promise with professional mentors as well as organizations willing to give out scholarships to both women and men.

Sponsored mainly by National Grid as of mid-February, this STEM Goes Red initiative will also involve half-day conferences geared toward young women in the area.

The committee at the helm will put effort into making the percentage of women in the STEM workforce “reflective of what society looks like” according to Terzian, who cited a statistic that only three out of every 100 female STEM degree holders secure a job in science, technology, engineering or mathematics.

“I understand that when you go to study something, that may not always be the career that you go into, but specifically for STEM, that number needs to be higher,” Terzian said. “It’s an intimidating field when you don’t see yourself represented.”

Terzian said she would be “ecstatic” if women accounted for 70% of STEM workers in the United States by the end of the decade. “That means all of this work and these ideas and these hopes will have paid off,” she said.

At that point, she said she would welcome the sprouting of an initiative to get more men into the STEM field.

“For me, it’s serving the community and being a motivator and a positive force,” Terzian said. “Sometimes people are discouraged and they don’t think they can do something, but I want to be that inspiration to say ‘look, you can do it.’”

That attitude, she claims, is part of what the Mrs. Syracuse pageant is all about.

Before becoming this year’s holder of that winning title, she worked on branding and marketing herself around the city. Furthermore, she has sung “The Star-Spangled Banner” at public events and volunteered at various establishments in town.

The state pageant in Rochester, which has been set to take place in July, will involve questions from a panel of judges and an onstage competition complete with opening numbers, swim-suits and evening gowns.

Before making her way to Syracuse, Terzian — who grew up in Garland, Texas — had lived for years in New York City, much of that time spent in the vicinity of news journalist Dan Rather.

While at Sam Houston State University, which boasts a communications building named after the former evening anchor, Terzian was awarded an internship connected with an hourlong, weekly investigate journalism show he hosted on HDNet called Dan Rather Reports. After the internship’s completion, she earned a full-time employee position.

Over 11 years, she went from answering phones to applying Rather’s makeup to becoming a full-fledged producer on The Big Interview, which has found Rather conversing with entertainment figures, oftentimes musicians such as Dolly Parton and Bryan Adams.

“It was an incredible experi-ence,” Terzian said.

Amanda Richie Terzian lives in downtown Syracuse with her “energetic” two-year-old son James, her 15-year-old Yorkipoo Maddie and her husband of five years, Jim, a radiologist in the area. SWM