The Motivational Journey of Leia Baez

Jenna Janssen NEWS EDITOR

Meeting Leia Baez was a motivational journey, as listening to the experience of a person whose life has had ups and downs but ultimately reached a path of success captivated me. Currently a communications director for Douglas County, Baez has the primary responsibility to serve as the Media Relations Director and PR contact for the entire county, and has been excelling at the job for over six years. Prior to that, she was a hard-working journalist at the Omaha World-Herald.

Juggling homework assignments while in college, Baez was also working part time with the newspaper, taking sports scores over the phone in the sports department on Friday nights. Then, she made her way up to become a reporter and editor. She cites experiences like these as helping her get to know the newspaper industry a little bit more.

Her love of writing started even before this, while she was in high school.

“I kind of found my way to newspapers and journalism because I wanted to — I actually tried out to write for the yearbook,” Baez said.

“I really wanted to be on the yearbook staff and we had to write an essay about why we wanted to be on the yearbook staff, and I didn’t make it. I was so bummed, and I remember seeing the list, you know, all the names of my friends were on the yearbook staff, and I wasn’t on there. And I was, like, super upset. But it turns out the journalism teacher actually wanted me to be on the newspaper staff. Because she loved my writing.”

Baez says one teacher, Mrs. Beckstead, was instrumental in helping her fall in love with journalism by redirecting her career path.

As she began working at the Bellevue West newspaper in her school, she immediately fell in love with journalism.

“And then I knew, like, I’m going to do this, I want to be a journalist and I want to interview cool people and I wanted to tell stories because I loved writing and storytelling, and so I was like, this is perfect,” Baez said.

When Baez got to college, she started writing for her college newspaper — The Gateway — during her freshman year in 2001. For five years, she worked at The Gateway, absolutely loving it and all the experiences she was able to gain from working there.

“I learned so much from there, you know,” Baez said. ‘I mean, that’s when you really learn what it’s like to be a journalist, cause you’re actually thrown into real life experiences, you know,

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