Media Contact: Amber Hinton, Communications Graduate Student, ahinton13@student.gsu.edu
The Southeastern Emmy Award is given annually to someone who demonstrates excellence in television journalism.
ATLANTA- Sophia Lopez, a former production assistant at Univision Atlanta, used her passion for journalism to produce an award-winning story in May of 2017, for a program called “Aventura sin Fronteras.”
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Lopez credited her inspiration for the program, “Aventura sin Fronteras”, to a guy from Chile named Ignacio Valenzuela who graduated from Georgia Tech and was working for Coca-Cola at the time. She explained how he went on a trip with two other friends to pursue his life-long dream. Valenzuela shared all the videos he made during the trip and talked about his experience with Lopez.
“[People] just want to talk and they just want somebody to hear them,” Lopez said. “And sometimes what they want to tell you is very important. It’s something you can learn from.”
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Lopez enjoys learning about people and likes to show the world what’s going. “I always had the desire of knowing more… have more knowledge about people, culture, the way they behave, what they do, stuff like that,” Lopez said.
She always wanted to work for Univision and that was a goal for her. The environment there was intimate as Lopez described her coworkers as family. They were there for her and supported her through it all.
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Lopez recognizes Amanda Ramirez, reporter for Univision, as a key person and mentor for this project.
The Emmy gave Lopez confirmation that she was doing something right and that it was needed. “Because sometimes you get kind of tired working hard, working hard, working hard, so this type of achievements [is] something that can help you just keep going and keep doing it,” Lopez said.
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Lopez came to the U.S. in 2012 from Maracaibo, Venezuela with the intentions of learning English. She graduated from Georgia Tech majoring in journalism.
Students can get practical experience through Georgia State University TV (GSUTV), the university’s partnership with Georgia Public Broadcasting. GSUTV has won several Emmy and Telly Awards in recent years. To learn more about Georgia State’s journalism program and how you can connect with other TV stations, please visit their section in the College of Arts & Sciences Programs.