Linda Nyemba '05
Curiosity Leads Her Way
Linda Nyemba talks at such a rapid pace as she describes her work in social media that you feel as if you need running shoes on your brain to keep up with her. After a few minutes, it is clear why this 26-year-old has achieved so much so soon.
After graduating from GUS in 2005, Linda went to the Putney School in Vermont and then on to the University of Chicago where she majored in film and media. When President Obama’s former campaign manager David Axelrod came to the university to form the Institute of Politics, Linda was introduced to the power of digital media. Her senior thesis, influenced by her study of communications guru Marshall McLuhan, concerned how social media can affect the way people interpret the news. Following graduation in 2013, she had the opportunity to work in Washington, DC at The New Republic, the staid old magazine that was newly committed to entering the digital age. “I was fascinated with the challenge Chris Hughes and his team had to transform the magazine, yet maintain its heritage,” Linda says.
Form there, the moves came fast and furious. Linda moved to New York City to work for The Atlantic magazine and then to The Economist, before making the leap to Berlin to work remotely in 2015. She was hired in 2016 by Absolut in Stockholm to help their Malibu and Kahlua products on digital branding before returning stateside to work for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Brooklyn, on the digital advertising team creating the narrative and mobilizing voters through social media. When the campaign ended, Linda returned to Berlin to work for Tech Open Air, Europe’s leading interdisciplinary technology festival. That ended in July 2017 and she is now consulting for Smart Valor. Based in the Swiss Crypto Valley, Smart Valor is a blockchain startup “set to reinvent private banking while building on the Swiss legal framework,” according to Linda. Along with helping them host their first ICO Summit in Zurich, she will be establishing their social marketing and communication foundation.
What excites Linda is the challenge of learning new industries and determining how to apply digital media to tell their stories. When she tackles a new project, her task is to become a brand storyteller, “to translate our message and our story on different platforms,” she explains. "To achieve success, several questions need to be answered. What are the different things that need to be talked about? What sort of content should be used? Who is engaging with the platforms being used? The message needs to be communicated differently via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or a website, and depending on the audience. Linda says she takes a hands-on approach to each project, doing a lot of the writing and working alongside web developers and graphic designers, and keeping an eye on analytics to assess the success of initiatives. “You have to have an understanding of analytics to assess the success of initiatives - to know how your stuff is doing,” she says. “This work requires you to have a wide understanding of all the moving parts.”
So how did she get so far so fast? “That’s a good question,” Linda says, taking one of the few pauses in our conversation. “Well, I’ve always identified people I wanted to work with. I even emailed one person for a year. If you really want something, it requires you to know how to network and how to build relationships.”
“I allow curiosity to lead me. I’ve been in roles and people say, why would you leave this role. I could have stayed for three or four years, but I seek new things out.”
Linda credits many influences with helping her become a self-starter. “My parents instilled in me a sense of independence. That has been really valuable to me. I learned that at Putney and the University of Chicago, too.” Linda believes that Glen Urquhart also broadened her outlook as a young child. “GUS definitely had a nurturing aspect to it,” she recalls. “We were really privileged with lots of opportunities that others don’t have in their curricula. We were always doing things outside the classroom that were cultivating our curiosity instead of just sitting around and talking about a particular subject. We learned that there’s more outside the classroom with activities like the trip to Mystic and the eighth grade trip to New York. those are things that I’m sure had an effect on me.”