Laura Foti, a Newhouse alum, has experienced great success in what one expects will be a long, turbulent, and challenging career. Foti began by sharing her story. In doing so, she emphasized the root of her passions: healthcare and an active lifestyle. These passions stemmed from her close relationship with her physically disabled father (who overcame many prejudices during his life due to his rheumatoid arthritis). This relationship inspired not only her appreciation and love for an active lifestyle (sports, running, etc), but also formed the beginning of her interest in communications. She shared how her and her father bonded over making up stories, and how he encouraged her to find relevance in every story she made. This advice began her storytelling path on the right foot: always being mindful of the honesty of a story and how much passion can drive someone.
Foti realized how through communications she could really help people. She experienced this through her father’s work in the healthcare system, and through her beginning reporting during her gap year in Argentina. Foti emphasized to never “gloss over something” and how important it is to get to the “core and truth of the subject matter.”
Foti’s vast experience with storytelling – from blogging to professional work at Hill Communications or a stint at CitrusTV – has given her the resources to be successful in her job as a Business Technology Analyst at Deloitte today. Foti shared that her job is essentially like a case study in which she tells a story about how to solve a problem. Through her job, Foti must be able to not only understand the details of what something is, but also how to improve it and explain it to users and clients. She described her job as “bridging the gap between users and creators.” Furthermore, Foti’s job perfectly embodies her philosophy about life – the necessity to feel uncomfortable and step outside comfort zones in order to grow. Foti, who was known as “the PR girl” for a majority of her time at Syracuse, proves her growth and risk-taking through her position at Deloitte. By working for a digital corporation, she is able to push outside her typical boundaries to use her communications knowledge in a unique way. This nearly fearless attitude that embraces potential change and ambiguity is both inspiring and the defining factor that leads her to success in finding effective solutions.