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Ana Hoosier ’18

Current job: Digital operations manager for the Los Angeles Rams. Hoosier oversees how the NFL team’s brand lives online — through its website, app and YouTube. Because the Rams, a franchise that left St. Louis in 2015, are a young organization in the L.A. market, Hoosier is a major part of building their online brand.

Degree: A 2018 grad, Hoosier earned a bachelor’s degree in new media communications technology with a minor in design.

Pandemic life: After a 15-month stint as a social media intern with the Green Bay Packers, Hoosier moved to Los Angeles — a city she had never been to before — this past October. It’s a dream job that the COVID-19 pandemic almost made impossible because it nearly canceled the 2020 NFL season.

Once she landed the job, the challenges grew. There was the need to move to L.A. before learning how to play a vital role in the organization’s online presence. It was the middle of the season, in the middle of a pandemic. That meant working from home, meeting coworkers virtually and acclimating to the daily workflow from her bedroom office.

“COVID-19 had a huge impact on my job,” she said. “Not just from the way I work, but the workload increased exponentially because everything needed to be done virtually; websites have been the only way we can reach our fans.”

How Ohio State prepared her: Maybe the hardest part of acclimating to her new organization was a lack of daily interactions to understand her coworkers’ communication style. So she set up regular Zoom conversations to learn about their  personal styles. That understanding is critical to her current role, and it’s one she began to value during her virtual classes at Ohio State.

“I learned a lot about communications and psychology and about how people operate,” Hoosier said. “And also human–computer interaction and user experience. It’s all important to what I do.”

Her online classes introduced her to working virtually and staying on track with deadlines.

One of her key undergraduate experiences was working with Ohio State Athletics as a social media intern, covering the football team her senior year. It gave her a front-row view of how to connect a major sports team to its fans.

“Our bosses expected the absolute best from us and it’s because you step into Ohio Stadium and 100,000 fans are there. I’m not sure anything prepares you for a pandemic, but Ohio State definitely put me in a good place to do what I do.”

Final thought: “If you’re a current student, it’s OK to not have it figured out. I graduated in December 2018 but I didn’t know what I was doing until August 2018. Two years after that, I’m in L.A. getting paid to do something I didn’t even know I wanted to do two years ago.”


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