Jennifer Bogo
Vice President, Content
Audubon magazine
One of my very first acts as an environmental journalist, a freshly minted editor at E/The Environmental Magazine, was to attend an SEJ conference. In the two decades since that fall weekend in East Lansing, I can trace my career through four different magazines (and back again) by the conferences I've attended and my relationships with the network of journalists I've met at SEJ — some writers, some mentors, some great friends who've since moved on to other careers. SEJ reinforced my career choice when I first worked at Audubon, and then remained the constant in my professional life when I took positions at Popular Mechanics and Popular Science — magazines where I combined a newfound enthusiasm for robots and space exploration with award-winning environmental journalism.
Now full circle to Audubon, I have an even deeper appreciation of the ways environmental reporting intersects with other fields and challenges — and the conversations that can be cracked open through the lens of an audience's shared interests. Just as acutely, I appreciate the rich and varied spectrum of environmental journalists that pull on hip waders and file FOIAs to improve the public's understanding of the issues facing our planet today. This experience and perspective has proven invaluable, both to my current role as the editor-in-chief of Audubon magazine — which recently received both national magazine awards and SEJ's Awards for Reporting on the Environment — and to the leadership roles I have held at SEJ.
As a past-conference co-host and board member, I have strong working knowledge of the organization's history as well as an eye on the decisions that will shape its future. SEJ is both the most steadfast organization I have been a part of and the most dynamic; its membership is totally committed and yet, like the media industry itself, constantly evolving. Because I have been both an Active and Associate member, I have a personal view of what distinguishes and unites the journalists in those categories — perspective I carry into important conversations around how we define those moving forward. Over the past three years I have also served on the board's governance, finance, membership and audit committees, and so I understand the wide array of challenges posed by the pandemic. With your support, I will help the organization not only continue to overcome those, but also to seize the exciting opportunities at hand.
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