Please join us in welcoming Hannah Kinney-Kobre to the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries as Communications Coordinator. Prior to joining the Libraries, Hannah was the Digital Editorial Coordinator at Pittsburgh City Paper.
We asked Hannah, who uses she/her pronouns, a few questions about herself and her plans for her new role.
What are your goals for this year as our new Communications Coordinator?
I’m excited to get to know not just my team but the entire Libraries staff. Everyone here does such amazing work — from supporting student work to their own programming to all kinds of interdisciplinary innovation — and I want everyone on campus (and beyond!) to know about it. I also want to take advantage of the freedom I have to shape my role in the newly formed UEIS unit and try out new approaches to marketing and communications in order to develop a broader skillset.
How has your prior experience prepared you for this role at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries?
I’ve had all kinds of jobs in arts nonprofits, higher education, journalism, and publishing, so in a way this role is like a synthesis of all these things. I certainly honed my ability to communicate with the broader public at Pittsburgh City Paper, where I ran social media and newsletters in addition to occasionally writing. But I’m also very familiar with the inner workings of university! I’m a faculty brat (English professor father) and as an undergraduate worked at my alma mater’s Center for the Humanities, where I first started doing communications and marketing work. I also did similar work — in addition to basic administrative duties — at the University of Pittsburgh’s Humanities Center.
I currently work part-time and on a mostly volunteer basis as the Publicity and Marketing Manager for Pittsburgh Sound + Image, a local microcinema and archive. We show repertory and experimental films at venues across the city (including the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Harris Theater, and the Mattress Factory) and also restore and preserve films made by local filmmakers. I’ve grown our audience substantially in the past year and a half, to the point that we sell out many of our screenings! I hope to have similar success here at CMU.
Additionally, I’ve built strong relationships with local media organizations through my work with PSI and City Paper. I hope to bring that publicity experience to this role as well to help grow the audience for our programming outside the university.
What projects are you excited to tackle in your first few months?
I’m excited to promote not just the amazing events and programming happening within the Libraries, but also the other programs that are now part of UEIS. I’m particularly looking forward to learning more about ETC and IDeATe and shining a light on the innovative and creative work they do. I love talking to people about the work they’re passionate about and crafting a narrative out of what I learn — particularly when that work has flown under the radar — and this seems like the perfect opportunity to do just that.
What do you like to do outside of work?
It should be no surprise that I like watching movies. I also like cooking, reading 20th-century novels republished by NYRB Classics, shopping for vintage clothing and antiques, and watching television so stupid it is slowly but surely killing my brain cells.
Illustration by Lucy Chen