Stories Beyond Newhouse: Mindy Stockfield ’93 – Senior VP Of Marketing At Scholastic
The Newhouse 44 events are undoubtedly some of the most meaningful opportunities to take advantage of, as you can gain insight from firsthand sources that attended Newhouse once upon a time. On October 26th, 2017, Professor Larry Elin was kind enough to cancel his normal TRF 635 Industry Forces lecture to let graduate students attend the Newhouse 44 Panel, and I had the pleasure of briefly connecting with Mindy Stockfield ’93, the Senior Vice President of Marketing, Creative, & Multiplatform Trade Publishing at Scholastic. Stockfield has valued the art of storytelling throughout her career with many different companies, such as Viacom, Cartoon Network, and even Disney. As a Media and Education major here at Newhouse, I commended Stockfield for her jump from entertainment media to content more geared towards educational media. To my surprise, Stockfield unveiled just how intertwined the industries are.
“It is not as different as you may think,” Stockfield told me in an online episode. “My career has spanned a variety of youth-oriented media companies – and whether it is TV, digital or publishing, the focus is always about storytelling. Books are clearly the seed to every story and that is why I have such respect for the work involved in creating one. The more I immerse myself in children’s books, the more I gain insight into new ways to tell story as well as the new types of topics that are incubating in the culture.”
Stockfield earned her Bachelors of Science in Advertising and Communications here at Newhouse, and she gives a lot of credit to this top-notch institution.
“I view my experience at Newhouse to be the foundation of my career. Newhouse not only gave me the ability to do incredible things, but it challenged me to think like I had never had done before. I became inquisitive, more curious, passionate, and especially brave.”
Stockfield shared an interesting story with me about an elective she took that tied with her major: Technology and Media. She typically avoided technical areas in the industry, but she was fortunate to find out how integrative this class was. She delved into research involving how technology was going to impact her future career field, eventually writing a final paper on helping define how people would connect with brands on new platforms. This paper ended up landing Stockfield her first job at a digital media agency startup, and her success from then on has been remarkable.
“If it wasn’t for me taking that “scary stretch” to learn something I didn’t think I would have interest in, let alone be capable of understanding, I would have never had the opportunity to be part of something so critical to shaping the rest of my career,” Stockfield noted. “Newhouse allowed me to take risks and helped shape me to find the fun in experimenting and doing what hadn’t been done before.”
This determination to confront an uncomfortable realm of media head-on inspired me to take an elective that also have scared me throughout my own career development. I don’t think I have ever gone on record saying this, but I have always wanted to have my own platform that involved animated characters, at least since I was like ten years old. For the last dozen years, I have not been developing my skills as an animator because the field is so difficult for me to wrap my head around. I love messing around with the Adobe Suite in Premiere and Photoshop, but my skills in After Effects and Illustrator are severely lacking, at least to my own standard. Now at Newhouse, I was presented with the challenge of taking a TRF 600 course with Jason Webb, and it will focus on animation. I was hesitant to take this class, but Stockfield’s advice resonated with me enough to get over the fear that has pushed me away from my childhood dreams.
Overall, Stockfield provided me plentiful insight into the media industry, a field I anticipate making my own unique impact in. With my new website doodlethenews.com being in the soft launch phase of its development as I write this article currently, I am only starting with my means, keeping my content consisting mainly of pictures. This next semester at Newhouse will hopefully enable me to build the skills I may need in the vast media landscape to succeed as a multimedia entrepreneur, and guidance from the likes of Stockfield is much appreciated.
He has been published across a wide variety of media outlets, including Sports Illustrated, the Cornell Daily Sun, SportTechie, Clutchpoints, Cavs Nation, the Cornell Chronicle, and many more.
Tobe has a plethora of hobbies, including writing, athletics, drawing, acting, and collaborating with others about ideas and startups working in the multimedia space.