Founding editorial director, Upworthy

My Greatest Accomplishment:

When we started Upworthy with the idea to make meaningful, important content go just as viral as cat videos, people told us that it was a nice idea, but that we’d only achieve having a niche site about social issues. No one thought there was a large market out there for what we wanted to do. Now, reaching over 50 million visitors each month, we’ve proven that there is an incredible appetite for positive, socially conscious content — audiences simply wanted it formatted in a different way.

How Drexel Helped:

Drexel remains the single, most formative experience of my life. The graphic design program taught me to be resourceful; every project starts with a blank page and you have to make it up. That’s where I learned there is much more than one solution to every problem if you can just get creative about it. In addition, that’s where I started to think deeply about communicating visually and what that really means. Upworthy is a visual-content-only site and I think that’s a huge part of our success. And just to say it — Philly is the best city in the world. The diversity, culture and personality of the city is a great backdrop for personal and professional growth.

Where I’ll Be in Five Years:

I’ll leave that up to God, but I would be thrilled to continue to help shift the entire media industry in the direction of socially progressive content in a larger way