feature
alumni spotlight
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Joanne Konstantinakos ’90
g Al Si P Magazines/Digital Media/Entrepreneur
Background: Joanne Konstantinakos is a true Spartan—her father was born and raised in Sparta, Greece—who has known since she was a little girl that she was destined to work in media relations. She wanted to be a reporter until she did an internship with a local television station during high school and realized that the crazy hours were not the path she wanted to follow. After graduation from VCU, she moved to New York City for a position with Conde Nast Traveler magazine, “the best travel magazine in the world,” she says. From there, she held other magazine positions with international inflight publications and Business Traveler, where she was an associate publisher and traveled around the globe an average of two times a month. She says, “That was a pivotal experience for me because it made me super independent. I had to figure out how to travel alone.”
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a Sc Ti V It was scary to walk away from a great “ salary and a world where I knew everything... I am now a big fan of lifelong learning. ”
The challenges of moving from print to digital: Moving on again, Ms. Konstantinakos became a publisher of Bene Italian Life & Style, collaborating with famed chef Mario Batali and his team and combining her loves of food, culture, fashion, and design. From there, she went to Saveur, a culinary travel magazine, a position she left in the late 2000s when the economy went south. At that point, she says she realized she needed to leave the print publishing industry and move toward digital media. “I was getting out of the magazine world in my late 30s, which was a really hard thing to do. It was scary to walk away from a great salary and a world where I knew everything. I could have stayed and
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found a mediocre job and taken classes while I was secure, but I didn’t….I am now a big fan of lifelong learning.” She says she spent a considerable amount of money on digital, technology, and design classes, which helped her bridge the gap between magazines and mobile and social media. This period was a major turning point for Ms. Konstantinakos: “I don’t want to paint a picture that it’s all been perfect. Life is full of ups and downs, and when you’re down, it’s scary, but you have to believe, create a plan, and push through.”
year she founded Reel Destinations, an online magazine that combines film, travel, fashion, food, music, art, and architecture. Ms. Konstantinakos regularly interviews trailblazers in those industries for the series “A Tastemaker’s Take.” For example, she has featured Sanne Ytting, the owner of the only Danish restaurant in New York City; celebrity jewelry designer Erika Peňa; and Diane von Furstenberg’s personal chef, Jane Coxwell. “I’m creating content in one job and helping content creators in the other,” she says of her dual roles.
Combining her talents: Putting her newly acquired skills to use, Ms. Konstantinakos is now the vice president of sales at Rapt Media, a start-up, interactive video company that gives users in-depth, “leanin rather than lean-back experiences. It offers great storytelling and big data,” she says. Rapt Media’s campaigns have included Maybelline, Beneful, and Philips, and each video is designed to entertain and inform. In addition to that role, last
Entrepreneurship from an early age: For someone who has continually reinvented her profession, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Konstantinakos designed the dress for her Steward graduation in 1990…and that she sold the design three times in three years afterward. “I probably made $1,000 on that dress!” she says.
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Crossroads
Spring/Summer 2015 2015