About the founder

 

Alexis L. Richardson

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alrichardson.global@gmail.com

I am an independent consultant harnessing 20+ years’ journalism, multimedia and instructional mastery to transform publications, products and organizations. My areas of expertise include digital content strategy, audience engagement, editing, writing and cultural competency. I’m a Digital Editor with NPR’s Next Generation Radio project, a trainer and Communications Director with Headway DEI Training, and a storyteller who began my career as a newspaper photojournalist in North Carolina.

My experience in the U.S. and abroad encompasses over a decade of teaching English language arts, plus copy editing, and working as a quality assurance editor of travel and lifestyle content. I’m an expert in editing developing writers and reporters, as well as balancing brand voice & establishing style guides for scalable, high-quality content. My editorial prowess is underscored by practice leveraging SEO and data-driven trend analysis, plus capitalizing on market awareness to increase user conversion, and publishing and sharing opportunities. My skills are punctuated by a commitment to differentiated, mindfulness-based coaching and facilitation.

When I’m not wordsmithing or workshopping, you can find me in a confab, parenting my kiddo, on a yoga mat, in a dance class or in the bike lane. Whatever I’m doing, I’d rather be doing it outside.

A Few of My Favorite Initiatives

During the summer of 2024, I had the pleasure of working as an editor with The GroundTruth Project and Report for America journalists telling stories through a solutions lens. Agents of change: Community efforts to overcome racial inequities is an editorial series created with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation that highlights how local initiatives address racial inequalities through grassroots approaches.

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I helped develop & implement many of the current workflows that the digital editors currently use during NPR’s Next Generation Radio, a week-long, pop-up audio and digital journalism training project.

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In 2002, after completing two photojournalism internships, I (with the guidance of News & Observer VP George McCanless) proposed my own job as a photocolumnist. I wanted to feature celebrations in order to highlight the increased diversity in the Triangle, as evidenced by the disaggregated data from the 2000 census (see below). The paper accepted my proposal and agreed to create the position for me. Plot twist: Instead, I accepted a role to elevate the photojournalism at three local papers under the N&O umbrella and execute the vision of a rebrand in which they would be combined into one: The Eastern Wake News.

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After the grace period for my college loans ended, I decided to become a teacher — yes, for the loan forgiveness, it’s true. I sold my 1998 Honda CRV and bought a manual 1985 Honda Accord in excellent condition. I learned to drive it in a weekend—sans air conditioning, sans power steering—in the heat of a North Carolina July. I targeted a school, and when the principal, Eunice Sanders, finally called me, she said “I can tell you are a journalist because you are persistent.” I was hired to teach English Language Arts, but primarily to revitalize the school’s newspaper and yearbook. Hillside’s journalism students produced four 16-page newspapers, and the yearbook ended 2004 in the black, for the first time in years.

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Upon returning to the United States after living overseas for six years, I applied for a mystery freelancing job with a small company called Moravia. It required an editorial test and only 48 hours to complete it. I became the second person to pass the test (out of over 900 applicants at that date), and was hired full-time as a quality control editor for a prestigious Maps project with a ubiquitous search engine. There I developed a number of workflow enhancements for co-managing the project’s over 150 freelance writers, including the cheat sheet, an FAQ for the writers and a quality improvement system.

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One of the ways I diversified content at The Mom Edit, a fashion blog, was by writing an issues-oriented column called “Unpacking With Lex.” Some readers didn’t always enjoy what I had to say, but liking societal realities wasn’t the point—expanding the audience was. I helped solidify the publication’s reputation for being “more than just fashion.” I taught myself most aspects of my job as editor, including search engine optimization, and eventually served as Chief Innovation Officer from 2020 until I resigned in 2023.

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In the fall of 2023, I edited The Harder I Faux, a series of science fiction short stories written by author King Kenney. It is exactly like Charmin Kumar describes it: “This book is as if "OK Computer" and "The Wire" had a baby.” Read it.

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Back when blogging was ‘cool’…

In the first quarter of the 2008-2009 school year at the American School of Dubai, I decided to do an experiment: I would do yoga with one of her AP Language & Composition classes but not the other. At the end of the year, I’d compare their test scores to see if there was a difference. That lasted about a week. The other AP Lang class wanted yoga too, and the girls even brought shorts to put on under their uniforms for class. On the day of the test, both classes did yoga together on the schoolyard prior to the exam. The counselor said he’d never seen a group of students so calm before an AP test in all of his years. Result: At least 50 percent of my students scored 4’s and 5’s on the exam that spring. I was hired, apparently, to teach those kids to write. Seems like it worked.

That One Photo Column Project from 2002

This is an image of young women dressed up in bright colors to perform a Mexican folk dance for a ceremony.

Five-year-old Carolina Granados (left) and Jacqueline Ambriz, 5, prepare to perform a traditional Mexican folk dance to celebrate the canonization of Juan Diego at Saint Raphael the Archangel Church on Falls of The Neuse Road Wednesday. July 2002.

Through all the make-up and hairstyles, dresses and jewelry you could tell that even the little ones knew how important this day was. They did not stand still for long—preferring to whirl and twirl in their special costumes—but when they did, even the energy did not stop. 

Mexico had been preparing for one year for the day the Pope would declare the first Indian from Latin America a saint, and the church had been preparing for one month. It meant just as much to the Latinos in North America as it did to those in Mexico. About 1,000 people came to Saint Raphael the Archangel Catholic Church that night to celebrate Juan Diego who, in 1531, witnessed an appearance of the Virgin de Guadaulupe, Mexico’s Patron Saint. 

Nearly 90 percent of the Latinos in the church congregation are from Mexico and the others are from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Chile and Guatemala. 

Hector Velazco, pastor associate (associate pastor) at Saint Raphael, who together with Padre (Father) Shay Auerbach arranged the celebration, said that people from all of the countries, including North America, joined in the celebration.

“It was an opportunity for unity for the culture, the people of Mexico, because there are different cultures inside of Mexico.”

More of my favorite things