“And though she be but little, she is fierce.” — Shakespeare
She wasn’t around in Shakespeare’s time, but the playwright’s Midsummer Night’s Dream quote sums up Mandy as a person and journalist. Though coming in at just 5’2″, her dedication and passion for the industry make up for what she doesn’t have in height.
NOW
Mandy serves as email and social editor at Google, specifically working with Google’s in-house data and insights publication Think with Google. Here, she uses all those years growing social for news to build a robust and healthy social and email following for those interested in Google’s insights related to digital marketing. Hers is the voice behind all copy as well as projects that come from the platform’s audience development team.
THEN
Before Google, Mandy was part of Conde Nast’s social video syndication team pitching and writing the scripts across the company’s publications. She had come to Conde from Revelist, where she served as the co-founding editorial director of news and identity, a new mobile-first website for millennial women.
She oversaw all three verticals (lifestyle, news and entertainment) but specifically led a team of 6 covering and helping to package the latest content related to U.S. and world news, the 2016 election, and all things identity related — from LGBT issues to feminism and beyond. She also assisted in the site’s video and social strategy, which jointly, brought Revelist over 20 million views in the first two months the site went live.
She was also the first to report on the banned comedian, Aaron Glaser, from the prolific NYC comedy Club, the Upright Citizens Brigade, while at Revelist.
FIRST CAME HUFFPOST, THEN ASHTON KUTCHER
Prior to Revelist, Mandy worked at A Plus, Ashton Kutcher’s startup media company that focuses on positive news. She specialized in editing and writing up relationship, lifestyle, news and women-centric viral, reported, and original content and growing the site’s Facebook account. Within her first two weeks, her stories on orgasm photography and Anthony Carbajal’s viral ALS video were posted to Kutcher’s wall, gaining over 2 million page views and climbing to the top spot on Newswhip. Within her first month, she was the first to break her story “This Is What Happened When A Woman Of Color Asked Photo Editors Around The World To Make Her Beautiful” that went viral soon after.
Before A Plus, she had been an editorial fellow, and soon after, an Associate Editor at the Huffington Post. There, she assisted the HuffPost Parents Vertical which won a Webby Award almost a year after her arrival. She was then asked to assist the HuffPost Family & Relationship vertical as a whole writing up news stories, editing blogs, and researching and executing user generated and service pieces. She also ran the HuffPost Parents Twitter page which boasts a 223,000 person following.
HOW’D YOU GET YOUR START?
Mandy graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a dual major in English/Nonfiction writing and Communication and with award-winning longform pieces under her belt, she left Pennsylvania a semester early to get a jump start in New York City. During the last few months of her college undergraduate career, she successfully juggled 3 online courses and a full-time internship with the late, great Ladies’ Home Journal magazine.
After receiving her Bachelor’s degree from Pitt, she continued to work for Ladies’ Home Journal as a freelance social media editor, managing the site’s Twitter on a daily basis as well as getting hired as a freelance digital editor for Latina.com. There, she reported a piece on Latinos and Atheism that trended on the site for a week, wrote up news and scheduled Facebook and Twitter posts for their 105,000 + following.
EXTRA CURRICULARS
She attended the ONA-Poynter Leadership Academy For Women in Digital Media in April 2015 as part of the inaugural class. She was one of 25 women chosen from a pool of 500.
She’s also spoken on countless panels, including in 2013 and 2017 for Her Campus Media.
One of her proudest moments as a journalist was working with refugees from Eritrea in Rome, Italy during the fall of 2015.
And this is just the beginning.
Mandy Velez 