Adam Reger | Freelance Writer

Greetings! Thank you for visiting this page, which collects material in support of my application for Haverford College’s Communications Specialist role. I feel confident I’d be an asset to Haverford in this role, and have gathered a few clips to underscore my skill and experience.

Strategic Communications

As Communications Coordinator at Falk Laboratory School, I was chief communications strategist, supporting administrators and other staff in devising ways to inform families of important deadlines, new initiatives, and needed actions.

Some highlights of my time at Falk include:

En Avant

En Avant is the alumni magazine I helped launch. I wrote all the copy in the first two issues of the magazine and selected photographs. Because Falk is part of the University of Pittsburgh, I was able to work with a graphic design team in the university’s Marketing & Communications department on the design and production of the magazine.

Rethinking Falk’s Marketing Approach

Instead of placing advertisements in the same group of magazines Falk had advertised in for the past several years, I used a portion of Falk’s modest advertising budget to secure billboards in high-visibility parts of Pittsburgh. The idea arose out of a desire to reach beyond the bubble of Falk’s usual family base (which drew heavily from University of Pittsburgh faculty), as well as to make current Falk families, faculty, and staff feel good about their association with the school.

The billboards were a great topic of conversation and I received a number of positive comments from Falk families and some alumni who saw them.

Supporting Staff and Administrative Initiatives through Falk’s Weekly Newsletter

One of my primary objectives in the position was simply to convey information and convince families to take action on needed items, such as signing permission slips and filling out forms. Making sure that families understood where to park on Back to School Night, knew when library books needed to be returned before the end of the school year, or were aware of flu-shot clinics in the library, all were part of the challenge of this role.

My chief methods were repetition, making sure that audience members had multiple chances to see the message, and varying those messages significantly enough to pierce the consciousness of busy, working parents. (I was also a Falk parent, and tried to tap into that mindset as I crafted my communications.)

Here’s a representative FalkLife newsletter:

Finding Creative Alternatives for Conveying Information

Dr. Jill Sarada, the school’s director, gave a “State of the School” speech for which I prepared a page of links and resources supporting the points she hit on in her talk. The presentation was given in the evening on a winter night and although attendance was strong, I pushed to make an audio recording of the talk that we then made available online (and promoted through the newsletter) so that parents who were unable to attend could catch up by listening to Dr. Sarada directly.

Of all the audio recordings I made during my time at Falk, this one received the most listens and I believe families appreciated having an alternative way to access Dr. Sarada’s speech.

On several other occasions at Falk, I made audio recordings to try to connect with audience members who might not engage with feature articles, or who might merely skim the weekly newsletter and other communications.

Here is one of my favorites:

“What Are Falk’s Magic Words?” podcast segment

Writing and Messaging

Both at Falk and in my current role as Marketing Content Specialist at Delaware County Community College, I write a variety of materials, including alumni magazine stories, web copy, admissions marketing emails, newsletters, fundraising appeals and collateral, and marketing materials. As a freelance writer for more than seven years, I’ve worked on many different projects, from reports to ghostwritten books.

Some relevant samples:

• Space to Learn report authored for The Grable Foundation;
• “Chaje!” a front-of-book story for Pitt Magazine; I’ve written several dozen stories for Pitt Magazine and other Pitt alumni publications, which can be found here; I’m including “Chaje!” because the image still makes me laugh;
• “Back in the Studio” for Delaware County Community College’s Ignite alumni magazine;
• Fundraising materials for Falk Laboratory School as well as several volunteer clients; over the past year I’ve provided fundraising writing on a volunteer basis in order to get more experience in the form.

Media Relations Support

During my time as a Senior News Representative in the University of Pittsburgh’s media relations department, I wrote dozens of press releases, fielded incoming requests for experts, and responded to fast-moving situations. In that role I prided myself in building relationships with local media and devising innovative ways to put Pitt faculty experts on the radar of local journalists and broadcasters.

While at Pitt, I wrote a number of stories for the Pitt Chronicle campus newspaper, collected here.

About Me

Although I am an experienced professional writer and communicator, my educational background is in the liberal arts: I attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, for one year and then transferred to Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, where I graduated with a double major in Creative Writing and Rhetoric & Discourse. I’m an admirer of the liberal arts and at Beloit I was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.

After graduating, I moved back to the Philadelphia area and worked as an editorial assistant on the journal Cancer Research for two years before returning to academia to obtain a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. Although it’s not represented on my resume, fiction is a big part of my life, as I have published over 20 short stories in literary magazines and continue to write daily.

Thank you!

Thank you for taking a look at this page. The fit between my background and the position convinces me I’d be a tremendous asset to Haverford College. I hope to have the opportunity to describe my experience in greater detail.