From her art classes as a child to her job today as a design editor at The Washington Post, Emily Chow (‘08) has always been a visual person. In high school, she discovered a passion for storytelling through photography and design, leading her to study journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

In college, she realized that she preferred building graphics over writing, and she began to work at The Washington Post after graduating.

Chow has been at The Washington Post for five years. She started out as a graphics editor but eventually switched over to the news design team. As an editor, she oversees the creation of graphic and design elements, from initial story ideas all the way to publication. She works on projects for various platforms, including both print and online.

“Our designers are tasked with these roles of really taking on thinking really thoroughly through how our readers are going to read this stuff,” she said. “As an editor on this team, we’re just really guiding lights so that we can let our people do the best work they can do.”

As an editor, her role involves training designers, helping to debug code and offering advice. She also determines what stories her team should take on and assigns them to designers.

Chow enjoys being part of the design team because it gives her the opportunity to interact with a variety of other departments, including reporting, photography and videography. In one of her personal favorite projects, “the n-word,” she collaborated with videographers to create a visual piece.

“We really wanted to do it from a very interactive and immersive experience. We knew that we were working with a really heavy topic, and we wanted to be incredibly mindful and cognizant of the fact that there were a lot of different voices in play,” she said. “We were not only taking on a conversation that I think was incredibly interesting, we were doing it in a way that we thought was adding to the conversation.”

Especially in the past year, taking on design for sensitive topics has been a major part of her job as an editor. Each design undergoes through rigorous editing and revision before publication to ensure that it accurately represents all sides of an issue.

“There are 700 of us, and that means that there are different perspectives around the table and hopefully enough diverse thought that we can flag things and we can keep people in check,” she said. “When it comes to sensitive topics, we have a lot of people in the room who are compassionate and mindful about that in itself.”

Chow appreciates the camaraderie she has with her colleagues as well as their mutual passion for storytelling.

“I’ve never felt like I can’t say what I want to say when I’m in a meeting and in a conversation that I have with people around the newsroom,” she said. “I know that people are willing to hear other people’s perspectives and opinions, and we can agree to disagree.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on January 24, 2017.