By Cherie Strain
Alison Berkley ('94) wears flip-flops to work. Three months out of every year she 's on vacation. And her employer finances her snowboarding trips to the world's most popular ski resorts.
Three years after graduation, Berkley is senior editor of TransWorld SNOWboarding magazine and managing editor of its Web site. She works in an industry that thrives on fun and for a magazine that she says accepts the personalities of its employees.
"We wear flip-flops, surf at lunch and enjoy this crazy So Cal lifestyle that's pretty darn laid back," Berkley says.
But Berkley is anything but laid back when it comes to her career. Her strong personality is quickly evident, and that energy fuels extraordinary initiative. As a student, Berkley didn't wait for opportunities to come to her. She didn't simply join the Campus Press; she created her own beat at the paper covering outdoor recreation.
When she was a senior at the School, Berkley says, her primary concern was not her grades. She was intent on making contacts in the world of magazines. She was already sending queries to national magazines about articles she wanted to write.
She admits her skills were lacking and that most of her ideas were rejected.
"I was trying to free-lance, but I was nowhere near ready to write well enough yet," Berkley says. But her persistence paid off.
In October 1994, Snow Country magazine accepted a proposal from Berkley to do a piece on professional snowboarder Shannon Dunn. Berkley paid her own expenses to fly to San Diego to interview Dunn, an acquaintance from Dunn's years as a CU student. Berkley asked if Dunn could put her up for awhile, and Dunn said OK.
Being in San Diego also gave Berkley the opportunity to contact the editors of TransWorld SNOWboarding and Snowboarder magazines, to whom she had been writing. She says that staying with Dunn, a star in the snowboarding industry, was impressive enough to get their attention. She got the chance to meet both editors; in fact, the whole staff of TransWorld SNOWboarding took Berkley and Dunn to lunch, she says.
Soon Eric Blehm of TransWorld SNOWboarding Business, a trade newsletter, gave Berkley a few free-lance assignments.
"I always tried to give him a little more than he asked for, maybe an extra sidebar or more intensive research than he'd requested," Berkley says. "He liked my work, and he gave me more assignments."
As a result, she made more money on her pieces and developed a solid relationship with Blehm.
By sending queries to magazines, she was actually networking, something she says she didn't even realize at the time. But that networking was Berkley's link to an editorial position shortly after her December graduation.
After having been turned down for a part-time editorial position at Rocky Mountain Sports, Berkley was feeling discouraged when she called TransWorld SNOWboarding in early February 1995. She wanted a summer internship in San Diego. The publication had bigger plans.
Blehm had just been promoted to managing editor and was intending to call Berkley to offer her a permanent position.
She became an assistant editor less than two months after graduation.
At TransWorld SNOWboarding Berkley has reported on all facets of the sport and snowboarders' lives.
"Travel features to contest coverage to any news-type items,'' she says. "Last year I covered an 'extreme' contest in Switzerland. I did a piece on yoga. I did a piece on chiropractic."
Her job requires some travel -- Austria and Switzerland mostly, but also Germany and throughout North America.
Berkley says she thinks writing is in her genes. Her grandmother graduated from the journalism school at the University of Missouri in the days "before women ever went to college," Berkley says.
"Anyway, the bottom line is that writing was always my calling in life. It comes through me. When I do it -- - I mean really do it, really get in the zone -- it's like I'm not even aware of what I'm doing."
At CU, Berkley says, the molding of her career started slowly. She hated the spelling tests and grammar lessons in her first journalism classes. But ultimately, it was this education that made her a success, she says.
"The bridge between college and the professional world is short for J-school students, because we receive some good training in school."
