Today's guest is an all-star in the worlds of business, digital, and all things WJPZ. Christy Vincent (nee Ogonis), from the Class of 2005 arrived on campus with a passion for music, but it was at an activity fair that Brett Bosse recruited her to come to the news department he was rebuilding at WJPZ.
Christy started doing news updates, but after working with Josh Wolff on the Z Morning Zoo, became fully hooked on the morning show, eventually becoming Zoo Producer on the executive staff.
As a freshman attending her first Banquet, Christy quickly learned about the resource that is the WJPZ Alumni Association. Brian Lapis connected her with a (paid!) internship as an undergrad at ClearChannel in Springfield, Massachusetts. And today's guest had a job before she graduated - thanks to Rocco Macri and Chris Bungo at PromoSuite.
Taking what she learned at WJPZ, Christy stacked up what she learned every time she took a new position. Today she takes us through her journey from PromoSuite to eMusic to SiriusXM, and eventually Facebook/Meta. She learned about customer service and retention, and a ton about digital marketing. You'll hear her passion for educating small businesses about the space - it's not just a playground for multi-million dollar companies.
In fact, as of this recording, Christy is looking for a new role - so don't be afraid to reach out!
We close with some WJPZ memories. Christy was shrewd enough to have Public Safety's escort service take her to the station at 5am. But rolling down frat row in the back of a cruiser at that time may have given some folks the wrong idea.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
Want to stay in the loop with WJPZ Alumni events? Subscribe to our newsletter on the right hand side of the page at http://wjpzalumni.org/
JAG: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Jon JAG Gay. From when today's guest was born with the initials CEO, it's no surprise that she has excelled at everything she has set her mind to, and her professional success is matched only by what a great friend she's been to so many of our WJPZ alumni. I consider myself lucky because I got to meet her when she was a baby freshman, when she walked into the radio station.
And that is Christy Vincent, formerly Christy Ogonis. Welcome to the podcast.
Christy: Thanks Jag, I didn't expect that kind of opening. I know we're on video and everyone won't see it, but if they could, I am blushing deeply at the moment, so thank you for such a kind opener.
JAG: I meant every word of it. It is well deserved. Let's start at the beginning, Christy. How did you get to Syracuse and then to WJPZ?
Christy: Yeah, sure. I'm a Massachusetts girl. I grew up in Western Mass just outside of the Berkshires, and I really was not looking at schools beyond proper New England. And it wasn't until my guidance counselor at the time who had watched me through high school really excel in all the musical theater stuff we were doing, band, lots of , not so much debate club stuff, but a lot of public speaking where he was like, have you considered Syracuse? And I hadn't because I drew that radius around my hometown and was like, I don't wanna go further than this. And then I started looking at Syracuse and I was like, wow, Newhouse looks amazing.
And I applied and I got in. And so it was it ended up being my top choice and it all worked out. So that's how I walked through the doors., and I say that with air quotes. of Syracuse in the fall of 2001.
JAG: Which was actually my senior year. We were in a brand new studio at that point. How did you stumble upon the radio station?
Christy: Yeah, you could ask one of our other mutual friends this question. His name is Brett Bosse, I went to the Schine Student Center activity fair. It must have been late August. So right after school had started and I was trying to figure out what do I wanna get into because I did a million things in high school and I loved it.
But I was really overscheduled and I wanted to pick one or two things that I could be really passionate about. And so Brett Bosse was there representing WJPZ and I apologize if I forgot anyone else who might have been there at the time, but it was really Brett and I struck up a conversation.
We were chatting and he said, would you ever consider coming over to the station? I'm looking to build my news team. And I wasn't particularly interested in news, which is fast forward, why I switched my majors in Newhouse at some point.
JAG: What did you switch to?
Christy: Television radio and film. But I still pretty much took the same classes, so I don't know if it really matters. But at any rate, he sold me on the studio and he was like, great, you start next week. And you land your first gig, and I was like, I have no idea how to do the news. So that was fine. I learned on my feet, but that was my entry. It was that activity fair and it was a really kind face. In a really big sea of people. And that's how I started.
JAG: I'll embarrass him by mentioning, I think Brett still brags about the fact that he was the one that found you and brought you into the radio station all these years later.
Christy: It was him selling the, the news program and the station itself. So take the credit, Brett. You're the reason why.
JAG: So you walk in the radio station to do news and what else do you end up doing in your involvement in the station from there?
Christy: It was really interesting actually. I was part of the news team and I started doing afternoons on maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it was the 89 second news update.
And I got really excited about that because, having to pace yourself and get it spot on, that was really cool. And so I don't remember what time of year it was that I started to do more than just news, but at some point, Josh Wolff needed a news person to fill in for the morning show. And I was like, I'm a morning person.
I can do that. And I didn't realize that it was six o'clock in the morning on a Thursday, I think. But I did it and I loved it and I stayed for the whole thing. I think I was only supposed to do maybe the news updates the first couple hours and I just ended up staying. Really hit it off in terms of the content that we were working on and the music and all of it. And so that was how I transitioned quite quickly into afternoon news updates to morning show co-hosting.
JAG: So this is your freshman year with Josh?
Christy: Yes. This was freshman year.
JAG: And where does it go from there?
Christy: So I joined WJPZ in August of 2001, and I was doing news. And as everybody knows, a few weeks later was 9/11.
And at the time, that was a real moment for me where I was. Holy cow. The news is real dark at the moment. This is this is a really heavy subject matter for a just turned 18 year old. And so something that I found really interesting about the station was that I was still really excited about the news.
But those 89 second news updates were just enough for me to stomach at the time. And then move on to other things, more uplifting things and community involvement. And so getting into the morning show with Josh really helped me understand a bit more of the business of radio. and what WJPZ was for the community.
And so when you think about the promotions that we were giving away, the sponsors who were giving us the promotional stuff to give away on the air, all of that co-branded marketing was really cool. And so because I fell in love with the format of the morning show, I ended up becoming the morning show producer, the Z Morning Zoo producer later.
I wanna say I joined the exec staff my junior year, sophomore, junior year, and became part of that staff. And so I was involved in recruitment for new DJs and for people to fill in. By the time it was my senior year at Syracuse, I was leading sort of the skeletal outline of what the morning show should be.
So making sure we were landing like the right elements. And then people could pepper in their content as needed. I always thought of it as like a brick and mortar. So we had the bricks that held the show together. And then whatever the co-host wanted to do for the mortar that was up to them. If they wanted to lean more on sports, that's cool.
If they wanted to lean more on pop culture, that's cool. So it was really the morning show that I focused on, but being part of the exec staff, as you may recall, it really helped you understand. The full business of the station.
JAG: And speaking of the business of the radio station, you got into the business shortly after graduating, right?
Christy: Yeah. So I had the lucky fortune that I joined the station as a freshman. I went to banquet my freshman year and realized quite quickly how robust and rich the alumni network is for WJPZ. And so I got to know, even as a freshman, I got to know my future employer. Rocco Macri and Chris Bungo.
And there's everybody else in there too. I'll talk about Brian Lapis and Matt Friedman and all of our other friends later. But I had known these individuals, my sort of my upbringing at Syracuse. And so when senior year rolled around and their company promo suite was looking to hire. I knew that Jana Fiorello had already landed a place there, and I was like, wow, that's a really cool next step in terms of what do you do after Syracuse. They were in the market I wanted to be in.
They were focused on an industry I was very passionate about, and so I went for it and I got it and it was great. I was pretty excited that. I had a job before I graduated. I knew a job was coming right after I graduated. So thank you Chris. Thank you, Rocco, for always being the start of my career.
I couldn't have done it without you.
JAG: You were one of the lucky ones. What did you do at PromoSuite?
Christy: So I was an account executive there, so I was doing primarily new business sales. But there were some things where like you would own a market or a cluster of stations and maybe you'd signed on a few of the stations in the cluster to PromoSuite, but there were still other stations. And most of it was new business development, but some of it was existing account management or upselling.
JAG: Got it. Got it. And from Promosuite, what was next?
Christy: From promo suite, I continued to stay in the radio sector. I actually went on to work for Sirius Satellite Radio for a number of years, and this was a different take on sales and selling. It was actually working with their customer service centers globally on sales and retention strategies. So when somebody was like, I don't want this satellite radio anymore. My radio's broken. They would call into a call center and tell somebody, hey, I wanna cancel. And I was responsible for putting together the programs to be like no, don't go.
What could we do for you? Would you like a new radio? Could we give you a few months free? And I was, gosh, I was in my early twenties at the time, and it was fascinating. What happens on the other end of the phone when you call into customer service somewhere, and that job built a huge amount of empathy in me for who's on the other line.
You're never happy when a piece of technology or a service is failing you. But there is a human that you are calling on the other end of the phone. And so that has built a deep understanding in me about what is exceptional customer service, and what's terrible customer service and so good lessons learned there in terms of how to do things well.
JAG: I think that's a double-edged sword. When I was in college on, semester breaks and vacations, I worked in a call center. I worked in a roadside assistance call center, and I think when you've worked a customer service job and you've seen the other side of it, I think there's two pieces to this.
One is what you just alluded to, which is that you know what's good customer service and what's bad customer service, because you've seen it from the other side. But I think the other side to your other point is empathy. Once you've worked a customer service job, if you call somebody, whether it's for your a dentist appointment or for a subscription, you subscribe to online or whatever it is.
I think once you've been on the other side of that phone, you tend to be a lot more nice and a lot more patient and realize, just like you said, there's a human on the other end of the phone. And it will be a lot for me to ever lose my cool with somebody on a phone, a customer service, because I've been that other person.
And I think even if it's, picking up dinner or whatever you're doing, just be nice. It's not that hard.
Christy: Yeah. Kindness. It's free. It's very easy.
JAG: I'm thinking of every time that I've called to say, hey, I don't think I want my Sirius satellite radio anymore. And they're like we'll give it to you for next to nothing.
And I'm like, okay, I guess I'll hang onto it for a while. And I think the jig is finally up. I think I'm finally paying full price for it now. But it is interesting to think about how you said you're in your early twenties and you're helping figure out the flow of how that call would go and what gets offered.
Christy: Yeah, you know, I've worked in a lot of subscription and membership businesses since then, and it was really, that was the start of it for me was what does it take to create a really good customer retention flow when someone is like, "I don't want this anymore." It's being the master of the breakup. How do you retake control of the situation, which has never worked in my personal life, but definitely worked for me professionally.
JAG: However, and this is what I alluded to you, but about you being a great friend, I can't count the number of breakups that I've been through personally that I've called you for advice on. You have been such a sage advisor to me over the years, , so thank you for that.
Christy: But also listen you've done the same thing for me. I think we've always had the benefit of knowing each other in our younger years that, your twenties are great, but your twenties are terrible. So we lived through that.
My thirties were great. I'm heading into my forties now. Your thirties, you know you make more money and so that helps. Your forties, I feel like these are gonna be great. I don't expect any crazy phone calls. Everything's gonna be smooth. Don't tell me what the outcome will be there, Jon.
JAG: Since when do you call me Jon?!
Christy: Sorry. I'm I'm used to the formal, yeah, JAG, I'll have to go back to, I'll have to go back to Jag versus Jon . No, it's all the interviews I've been on lately where I'm like, Ooh. Do you call the person by their nickname or do you call them by their real name?
JAG: Okay. Fair. So what's next after Sirius?
Christy: All right, so for me, being in the radio industry, it was always about the music and this was the former band geek in me. This was the musical theater nerd. The music was always the reason why I was doing radio stuff. And I ended up moving into a digital music subscription company, which was a rival at the time to iTunes.
And the name of the company was eMusic. . And their big value prop was they signed all of the indie labels, so they were selling digital downloads for indie, they were like, screw Apple. We're not gonna put our albums and labels on Apple. We're gonna sell them through eMusic. A global company and they were pretty successful at the time.
They're gone now and that's okay cuz I have a lot of cool merch that you can never get again. But this was a partnership marketing gig. It was really focused on not only sales and retention of subscribers and customers. But how do you partner with big brands to create a co-branded experience?
And so we did a lot of work with the tech industry in terms of like physical technology. So you buy some new Bose headphones, and you get 75 free downloads from eMusic.
JAG: Oh, okay.
Christy: You buy a new laptop from Lenovo and the eMusic app is installed on the interface and you get a free subscription and a free download situation and again, that was really fascinating from the subscription time at Sirius. And so I built on that, got back to the music at eMusic and that was actually where I learned a ton about digital marketing. How do you run ads across the interweb and make money off of them to drive your business? And so fast forward, I moved my career from eMusic into digital marketing and the digital media industry fully, and I've been there, 13, 14 years now, and I don't know if I'll ever leave. So we'll see.
JAG: And you've worked for obviously one of the biggest names in the space and that of course being Facebook/Meta. Tell me about your roles there very briefly, and I promise I don't want this to sound like a job interview. I just want other alumni who don't know you as well. I wanna get them to know your backstory. So please don't feel like this is a job interview. It's not formal.
Christy: Yeah no, this is great. Listen, one, this is free press because spoiler alert, I am in the market for a new gig, alumni base. But two, I like telling my story. Everybody should be able to know their story and know their truth and play it back in different ways.
And yes, I, for the past about seven and a half years have been at Facebook and they brought me in based on my subject expertise across, really, the infrastructure of the digital media ecosystem. So everything from, where do you host your content for a digital ad? What are the bells and whistles that you have to press to serve an ad to the right person at the right time?
And so I did a little bit of account management, a little bit of new business development at Facebook. But for the past several years I've done marketing and analytics education, both internally and externally on, geez, if you're spending a hundred million dollars in a digital media plan, is it working? Just throwing your money at this big name like Facebook or Google?
What are the ways in which you can measure and make sure that it's affected? And so I've done a ton of development in terms of like, how do we upskill not only our employees, but everybody on how this works. Because if there's like a lack of knowledge, then people aren't gonna wanna invest their time, energy, and most importantly their money.
So that's really what I've been doing for the past several years, is building these internal and external learning and development programs to upskill the industry.
JAG: I think that's fascinating, especially what you said about taking a bunch of stuff and throwing it at the wall. Cause I think a lot of folks who don't understand the space very well, I just need to spend money on Google ads. I just need to spend money on Facebook ads. But knowing where to essentially hunt with a sniper rifle instead of buckshot. And then also how do you measure your results? I think that's so important.
Christy: Oh, it's so important. And when you think about, forget about like your Nikes and your massive companies of the world.
What about, your local running store, or what about the coffee shop that just opened on the corner and wants to reach local people and they have a hundred bucks to sell? Those are the people that I'm most passionate about educating because I want them to not be afraid of the big names and the big infrastructure of Google and Facebook.
Anybody should be able to go into these platforms and spend their money and make an investment and get that money back, two times at least. So 2x return is what I always strive for, and I think it's really important that there are ways for people to upskill themselves that are frankly free. So that's another piece of it, but I could talk for hours about that.
JAG: Give me a quick 30 seconds on that.
Christy: I think that education should be accessible to all, and I know this is ridiculous coming from someone who went to a private university. But when it comes to digital media literacy, it should be free. Nobody should have to pay for baseline understanding and foundational education.
If you wanna get things like professional certifications or master's degrees in digital media, great. But I am very invested in creating a world where digital literacy is accessible to everyone.
JAG: It is easy to hear the passion in your voice. One of the things that I heard you mention as you took us through your career to this point, Christy, is how you built on the knowledge in each role and led that up to the next role and stacked it like that.
Let me bring it back to WJPZ. What are some of the lessons that you learned at WJPZ that served you well throughout your career so far?
Christy: The biggest one is timing. Timing is everything, and I mean that in a literal sense of landing your audio points correctly when you're doing a 89 second news update.
But I think it also, as it relates to career and professional basis, know your audience and know when you need to land the point and when you need to listen. Active listening is just as important in timing, what you wanna say as saying the actual thing that you wanna say, if that makes sense. Everybody needs to recognize that when it comes to your professional career.
Yes, you are in control and you can go wherever you wanna go and do what you wanna do, but there are times when the timing won't be right to do certain things and that's okay. There are times when opportunity knocks and yeah, you got it jump for it. But I think that idea of timing and having a lot of room for making decisions and when you're gonna land that point versus do that next thing, that's a big thing that I learned at WJPZ.
The other thing I would say is, I had a part-time job, my junior year going into my senior year, I landed a part-time job at a ClearChannel cluster in Springfield, Massachusetts, thanks to Brian Lapis. Our wonderful alumni here, Brian got me a gig at ClearChannel working part-time for the country radio station there.
And there was a gentleman who I worked with in the promotions department. He was kinda listening to where I was focusing on in my career. Cause I had one more year at Syracuse. And he was like, you know what, it's all radio. No matter what you do, you're gonna find out that it's all radio. And at the time, I didn't really understand that.
I was like, okay, dude, that's great. Can I get my paycheck? I just set up for this event. I'm gonna go. Bye.
JAG: Wow. You got paid. I'm impressed by that.
Christy: Yeah. Brian again. Brian Lapis scored me a good gig there. But the idea that it's all radio, it's the way you treat people, which hopefully is kind.
Both on and off the air is critical to you and your brand and the way that people will see you both at that job and in the future. I think the commitment. The pressure, the challenges, the perseverance that you experience when you're in the radio industry, whether you're on the air or off the air behind the scenes.
All of that is something I took with me from, when I was 18 years old, up until when I'm an undisclosed age now. Someone can do the math on the backend and figure out how old I am. And then lastly, I would say finding your voice is so important, and I will definitely say that WJPZ helped me find and polish and foster my voice in a way that I know my voice can drive meaningful change.
JAG: Wow.
Christy: And so thanks. WJPZ.
JAG: So Christy, earlier you mentioned your experience in digital and in marketing. You were part of a significant time period at the radio station where we went digital.
Christy: Yeah, that was wild. Again, this is back when I was, I think 18, 19, and I didn't have the tech chops that I now do in terms of a physical hardware, frankly, but also computer software.
But we were switching over to an entirely digital board, and that is very different from the high touch bells and whistles and carts that we would have, to switch over in the little cart readers. And so that was just a phenomenal moment in terms of continuing to keep WJPZ as the best college radio station in the country.
Not only was it for talent in our programming, but we had the tech behind us to back that up, and I was astonished at how quickly everyone was able to make that leap from, reaching around all over the studio to get the carts in the right songs versus computer. And it was quite the foreshadowing to where the advertising and music and digital industry has now gone, which I think is awesome. It was just a huge piece of evolution at the station, and I was happy to be part of it.
JAG: Just one more instance of us continuing to evolve as the world's greatest media classroom. Can you name some of the folks that you've built lifelong relationships with? I know there's so many of them, but some folks that you know, whether they went to school with you or before you or after you that you've had these lifelong relationships with because of WJPZ?
Christy: Sure. I'm talking to one right now, obviously. JAG, Mr. Jon Gay. I called you Jon again,
JAG: The feeling's mutual.
Christy: Look, there's yourself. And then there's individuals like Josh Wolff who I was on the air with. Brian Lapis. I've always sang out praise to. And then there's other people who I didn't connect with until after I graduated.
And so I look at someone like Matt Friedman. Matt and I knew each other from the banquets and he was always part of my alumni network. But I feel like Matt and I have fostered an even stronger friendship since I graduated. You have TJ Basalla who I was on the air with, and there is something that I wanna call out.
What I love about the Banquet each year, or each five years, or each decade that you go, is that it is that family reunion where, yeah, it doesn't matter if you haven't seen or spoken to someone for a very long time. The minute you're back, it's no time has passed. And so I think about someone like Dave McKinley.
JAG: Yeah.
Christy: Who was my co-host for years on air. And we didn't see each other for a very long time. After graduation, we were in the same graduating class and we were very close at the time. And then, our worlds drifted. But whenever we see each other at these banquets, it is like no time has passed.
And what I will also say in terms of these friendships is that they evolve and they mature over time. Yeah. So someone like John Ferracane, who was I think the GM freshman year.
JAG: Would've been your sophomore year. Yeah. Cuz that would've been the year after I graduated.
Christy: Yep. So John and I knew each other in passing while I was at the station.
But it wasn't until after we both graduated and went out in our careers and reintroduced ourselves at an October fall conference, that I got to know him and his lovely wife, Lindsay Janus, who, they were both very successful at ABC. We built a friendship and now it's like we see them in the city, we see them in California, and it's just it's a whole different level beyond the walls of the station.
And it's taken what you learned at that station and bringing it out into the world.
JAG: You mentioned the banquet. You spent some time as the chair of the banquet.
Christy: I did. I was on the board of directors for three years as like a young alumnus, and I wanna say it was the second or third year that I was on the board, that I was the banquet chairperson.
I wanna say it might have been Banquet 25, cuz I remember making quarters because it was the, like there you go, have a quarter. It's a silly take on that. Don't hire me to do your branding . It was really fulfilling and I loved it. I think at the time I was really challenged because I was working for Sirius and I was on the road like three weeks out of the month.
So unfortunately it just got to a point where I was, I don't think I can take another call from a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky, or I can't get reception in this weird hotel in the Dominican Republic. So I loved it and it is, listen, hats off to everyone who's done the banquet over the years.
Dena, I think is probably the longest standing banquet chairperson. She is the queen of chairpersoning. We've had Eileen in the past, and then we have a new one this year.
JAG: Sam Kandell, Class of 18. You'll hear her voice in this podcast.
Christy: I think the banquet's in really good hands with Sam, so that's amazing.
JAG: Tell me if you can think of one, Christy, a funny story from your time at JPZ that you still look back on X years later and laugh.
Christy: This is a little it's like indirect JPZ. It's related to my transit to the station every morning for the Z Morning Zoo. So my freshman year and sophomore year, I lived in Day Hall and Sadler Hall respectively.
They're pretty far away from the station and you have to leave at I don't know, five o'clock in the morning to get over to the station and set up and prep. And so Syracuse University offered this great service where public safety would come and actually pick you up and drive you to the station and like an 18 year old woman trying to walk across Syracuse campus at night. That was just like not, that was not gonna work for me. I was not gonna do that on my own. So I would call public safety every, I think Thursday morning, and they would come and pick me up. And there were a couple times where they would drive me down, I don't know, Comstock or one of the major like frat rows.
And people would recognize me in the car that I knew and they'd be like, "Christy got arrested! Oh, she's getting taken home!" And I would be like, no I'm going on the radio. And nobody believed me. And so I'd see, saw some of these people in class later and they'd be like, you were so wasted, they had to pick you up.
And I was like, no, I was stone cold, sober, exhausted, and going to the radio station. So that's one of the funny stories I have. And then the other, which I hope is relatable, otherwise I'm gonna be really embarrassed. I can't tell you the number of times that I like got locked out of Watson because I was like jetting over to Kimmel to grab a, like a Dunkin?
In between certain sets. I don't know what it was, if I would forget a card or, but I got locked out so many times and again, I was like, hi, Public Safety, can you come let me in because I'm on the air.
JAG: And we're about to be off the air unless I get in there in the next three minutes.
Christy: Yeah, that was really fun. Those are my two probably silly stories.
JAG: Christy, congratulations on all of your success. She is looking at the moment right now, as she mentioned earlier. So if you are looking to hire somebody with Christy's chops. Her skillset's probably too long to list on this podcast, but feel free to reach out to her.
Christy: Thanks so much, Jag. This has been so much.