Nine-year-old Jamie McNamara cemented two careers: Jamie McNamara Hawk’s 15+ year-long journey in magazines and digital media and, as of last week, mine (via a story delivered by a 36-year-old Jamie McNamara Hawk about how she wrote a contract and signed it when she was in fourth grade as a way to cement a career in magazines that she needed to know was happening).Â
I was on the fence about my own journalistic future, but after one hour of listening to Jamie (followed by a serendipitous sharing of my photo by her from Her Campus at FSU), I was as locked in as Jamie was after signing that contract.Â
Jamie Hawk, the self-proclaimed Her Campus Media hype woman from the South, spoke with Her Campus at FSU in early November. She shared her career experiences and the importance of networking and hard work in pursuing one’s goals.
Jamie Hawk attended the University of Alabama after growing up in Bristol, Connecticut. Her family was living in Connecticut at the time due to her father’s employment, but she frequently visited Alabama every summer because her extended family was there.
She considered living the life of a young college student in New York City as a graduating high school senior but instead chose to enroll in the University of Alabama following in her mom (a first-generation college student)’s footsteps.
Once enrolled, Jamie discovered she had little in common with the bulk of Alabama’s student body as a young woman from the North. However, Hawk knew that she needed to take advantage of the opportunities that this large university offered. She saw an advertisement for a Sports Illustrated On Campus internship program on the wall of a campus building and recognized it as a chance to gain experience in the industry.
“It changed my life,” Hawk claims. On day one of orientation to the Sports Illustrated On Campus program, which included teams of five at 50 universities nationwide, Jamie learned that the top two members of the 500+ student program nationwide would be selected for summer internship positions at the Sports Illustrated Headquarters in New York City. She called the management team for the program that day and let them know she was going to be one of their two interns.
Jamie spoke about how she had made it her college mission to secure internships at Sports Illustrated every summer from then on. Hawk made sure that no one forgot about her. She was fortunate to obtain the internship during the summers of 2005 and 2006. Hawk graduated from the University of Alabama with a Bachelor of Communications in Journalism and a minor in creative writing.Â
From there, Jamie held several positions in marketing and sales with Time Inc., Sports Illustrated’s parent company. Once Jamie worked for all the brands she aspired to within Time Inc., Hawk started working for Her Campus Media as a Senior Business Development Manager in 2017. To get on the radar of the Founders of Her Campus Media, she sent a video highlighting her passion and skills and she obtained the position despite another candidate being in serious consideration already.
After two years, in 2019, she was promoted to Director of Sales and Business Development. In regard to the company of her dreams, Hawk shares, “Her Campus Media was built out of a need. There was no publication or brand that existed in 2009 that was just about the landscape of college life for women.”Â
Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, Annie Wang and Windsor Hanger Western (the three founders of Her Campus Media) decided to start the organization as a lifestyle brand that depicted what college life was like on her campus while they were undergraduates at Harvard. The brand evolved into five brands over time.
Hawk continues to share, “All five brands are designed to inspire, support and create opportunities for college students and young professionals— it’s mostly designed for women, but all people are welcome.” As an advertising partner to major brands, she provides current information on what young people are interested in.
As the founder of Jamie Hawk’s Flight School (a passion project turned side hustle designed to provide individual coaching to college women), Hawk offers value to newer generations. As a Director at Her Campus Media, Jamie educates brands about why their advertising should target younger demographics, such as Generation Z.
Hawk characterizes Generation Z and succeeding generations as “so important, so unique and so demanding of authenticity.” She also explains that the priority of Her Campus Media is to “maintain and nurture the trust of young women.”
Through her successful passion project Jamie Hawk’s Flight Society, Hawk also pursues her own path in terms of nurturing and empowering women. It started after she had her son and was on maternity leave in 2016. She sought to support other women on their journeys because she had the experience of being mentored by young women at Sports Illustrated when she was in college.
Hawk’s determination to pursue her passion for marketing and media resonated with me as I listened to her speak to Her Campus at FSU recently. I recalled there was a sense of urgency throughout high school to pick a career path that we, as students, would devote ourselves to at the ripe age of fifteen to demonstrate to universities that we had a genuine purpose and, as a result, deserved to be enrolled at their university.
I recall the anxious dilemma of selecting a major while applying to colleges as a recent high school graduate. I have had a love of writing since I was a young child. However, writing has never been a traditionally respected career among my family and peers.
Counselors and adults advised that it wasn’t a genuine career but rather just a childhood fantasy that I could fulfill when I went to sleep. While speaking with the chapter and when I personally spoke with her, Hawk emphasized that she had to truly commit to pursuing her passions for marketing and media.Â
She gave me three pieces of advice in response to my reservations about pursuing writing as a career:
- Only take advice from people who have your best interests in mind and who lead a lifestyle that even closely resembles the one you want to lead (both at work and outside of it).
- Fewer than one percent of people care about anything at all. Anything you are passionate about is an incredible gift. DON’T waste it.
- You are only failing yourself if you take seriously the reservations that others have for your ambitions. Whether you succeed or fail, you will be the only one who sincerely experiences it.
Hawk has had a commendable career, with a resume that features Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, Time Inc., and much more. When attending college, it can be easy to forget that interacting with other students and faculty on campus can be a valuable resource for realizing and attaining one’s goals.
If you want to hear more from Jamie Hawk, find her on Instagram via @jamiehawksflightsociety (and don’t blame me if it inspires you to change your major)!Â
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