Eyes Wide Open

With an array of interests, Elena Dean’s work ranges in subjects and mediums. She has a passion for advocating and using media to support meaningful causes. While studying Film, Television, and Media Arts at Quinnipiac University, she hopes that taking a media writing course will strengthen her writing skills and foster a cleaner method of sharing important messages.

Although Dean started her educational career at a high school surrounded by conflicting values, she overcame this by finding ways to keep a strong moral compass through adverse social influences. Dean found solace in film, literature, online writing, and science. She enjoyed educational experiences that introduced her to a new world, no matter if it was the world of molecules or that of Romeo and Juliet.

For over a year now, she has been volunteering at Where The Love Is Animal Rescue. She took on the unexpected challenge of trying to create a media prescence for the nonprofit in Hamden, CT. What became clear to her was that promoting important causes needed to be done cleverly. After working endlessly to push out the organization’s name, she became driven to attempt to find new, out-of-the-box ways to pull the audience’s attention.

While part of Dean’s dream is online advocacy, the other part of her heart lies with capturing the personalities of man’s best friend on camera. With experience working with dogs and her love for photography, she hopes to combine the two to create unique and fun pet portraits. Through this business, she can continue her work supporting shelters by offering advertisement photoshoots and promotional writing on her platform.

The newest media-writing project that will consume her free time this year will be travel blogging. Through this process, Elena wishes to learn how to document her experiences clearly and concisely to engage and excite readers.