For Meredith Rountree Worsham ’06, the value of the Elon connection is in the spirit of collaboration that extends far beyond campus.
Meredith Rountree Worsham ’06 always knew she wanted to work in New York City. She moved immediately following graduation, and started eight years ago in a junior level position for About.com, one of the largest Internet sites dedicated to solving problems and learning something new.
Two years ago, the About.com brand underwent a complete reinvention, just as Worsham became head of public relations for the site. It became her responsibility to tell media outlets the story of the new About.com. “When our new leadership team came in, they challenged the entire company to think creatively and differently—to be a company of innovation,” she says. “It was really refreshing, and scary, to be challenged like this and to think of new ways to tell our unique story.”
This rebranding meant a relaunch of the site, more than 100 new hires and new content, product and data teams. Another focus was to more prominently highlight About.com’s experts: the 1,000-plus content creators on the site who are knowledgeable about travel, health, style, money and food, among many other topics. Worsham knew she needed to find someone to create documentary-style videos to help tell the story of the new About.com, starting with a video on the site’s senior executive team. That’s when Worsham remembered classmate Brian Stansfield ’06 had moved to New York City to open a Run Riot Films office, and thought he’d be a perfect fit for the task.
“I wanted to tell their story in an interesting way and that’s when I asked Brian to help produce a mini documentary on three of them,” she says. “I had seen his work with Run Riot and knew he had the look and feel that I was going for and I was excited to work with a friend from Elon that I had known for so long.” Stansfield hit it off with the About.com executives, and has since been hired to create multiple promotional videos for the company. He is particularly excited to have been able to include other Elon alumni in the projects as well, including Anthony Saladino ’10, whose music with band Animal Years was used in one of the videos, and Brooke Morrison ’09, who served as talent in another About.com video. “There’s multi Elon-alumni crossover going on in these videos,” Stansfield says, “which I think is great.”
For Worsham, the value of the Elon connection is in the spirit of collaboration that extends far beyond campus. “Elon is such a special place and gave me relationships with some of the most talented, smartest people that I know and am fortunate to work with in my career,” she says. “They taught me collaboration and the value of the Elon connection. Wherever you go, there are always Elon alums who want to help you.”