Alumni Spotlight: Koppel on Careers in International Journalism
As a lifelong Russophile, Catherine Koppel (Pardee/COM ’96) knew she wanted to major in Russian and Eastern European Studies and Journalism at Boston University — two areas of study that would allow her to get valuable international experience through the Moscow internship program where she was able to intern at CNN’s bureau in the city.
Koppel says she “kind of took the road very traveled, but maybe not most directly, intelligently traveled,” to her current position as a Senior Producer at Reuters.
After graduating from Boston University, Koppel started in local broadcast news as an assignment editor in New Orleans, moved to Phoenix two years later and then moved back to New Orleans after another two years to take a position as the managing editor of the ABC affiliate WGNO where she remained for seven years, including when Hurricane Katrina hit.
“A few years after the hurricane I really felt like I needed to try for a career in Russia, so I applied and was accepted to an academic/professional fellowship that placed me at Reuters,” Koppel said. “When a producing job opened up in Moscow, I went for it.”
Koppel spent more than four years in Russia, covering anti-government protests and the court cases that resulted from them, the invasion of Crimea and unrest in eastern Ukraine, elections in the former CIS, the Olympics and even a 2013 on-camera interview in Moscow with then-businessman Donald Trump on his presidential aspirations.
Following her stint in Moscow, Koppel moved to Washington D.C. in 2015 and a few months later was promoted to Senior Producer at Reuters in New York (returning to Russia for a month in 2018 to cover the World Cup).
Koppel said studying Russia and Eastern Europe at the Pardee School remains relevant to the work she current does at Reuters, and was especially helpful during her time working in Moscow.
“The Russian language, history, literature that I immersed myself in during college provided and still provides context for my work at Reuters, but it was especially helpful in Moscow,” Koppel said. “While Winston Churchill’s description may feel right to some that Russia is ‘a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,’ I felt like I had a base to understand some of the culture and the events that informed much of what unfolded as news. I mean, the foreign minister is a poet and references Chekhov’s gun in press conferences.”
Discussing her time at Boston University, Koppel pointed to several professors who impacted her academic and professional development including Vitaly Korotich, Lawrence Martin-Bittman, and Pardee School Professor of International Relations and History Igor Lukes.
“I really loved how Igor Lukes invited us to appreciate literature through the lens of history and understand the experiences that make the masterpieces,” Koppel said. “I remember him telling us to think of ourselves as emcees, guiding a willing audience when writing, and that’s something I have tried to do in my work.”
Koppel said some of the most important advice she could give to current Pardee School students is to follow their interests and dreams when considering career paths, and to identify the paths that will get them where they want to be.
“I would also tell them to view their careers as a long game. I remember feeling ambitious and climbing the ladder and striving, thinking it was what I needed to do, when maybe it might have been better for me to stand back and look more critically at where I wanted to be, and switch lanes,” Koppel said. “It’s probably an anti-pep talk, but realistically, today’s graduates have 40-50 years of work ahead of them, so ‘making partner by 30’ or some other contrived goal needs to be kept in check. Life is about making a difference, having integrity, and enjoying your home and work lives.”