A rollercoaster! For better or worse, I started to work as a journalist at a very young age. The timing could not have been more perfect for a budding and keen reporter, as Venezuela was at the doors of a very turbulent period: coups, a deposed president judged and sentenced for corruption, large-scale economic crisis, social unrest, multiple elections, you name it. No wonder I was exhausted after a few years and looking to move into Academia – so I won a scholarship and came to the UK.
As luck would have it, I landed a job at the BBC World Service with the Spanish section, one of the first to explore digital in earnest. One thing of big organizations like the BBC is the opportunity to move horizontally and try your hand at many different jobs, picking up skills by the bucketful. After a few years, I had been a radio producer and presenter, online writer, reporter, international correspondent, digital video producer desk editor, planning editor, social media editor. Leading onto a job as a digital consultant for all 41 languages and Head of Social Media.
At that point, I felt that I had done everything that I ever wanted to do in journalism, bar getting a piece commissioned on the circus so that I could spend a month learning the trapeze (I tried – not given up just yet).