May 19
Pay It Forward 2010 Profile: Ruth Sylte
Published by Amybeth (@researchgoddess) at 7:00 am under Social
These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.
Spotlight: Ruth Sylte
Title: Social Media Director
Employer: GoAbroad
Who paid it forward: Bryan Person
What Bryan had to say about Ruth: “Ruth and I first crossed paths about 10 years ago, when I was in my first job out of college at a study abroad office in Central New York. Ruth ran workshops at the conferences I attended about using the web and technology in the field of international education, and as I look back, I recognize the personal impact she had on me to follow down the path of online communications. Ruth is absolutely a pioneer in the profession; I admire her vision and her passion.
“Ruth has dipped in and out of international education over the past several years, but we managed to reconnect through Twitter nearly two years ago…she certainly understands how online communications can be used to drive business and bring people together (particularly in a cross-cultural context)…I’d love to see her get some more recognition!”
Ruth lives in a college town along Minnesota’s Cannon River, south of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and northwest of Rochester. She earned a BA from St. Olaf College in Political Science and Religion. She was studying political philosophy and church history. She says that Political Science is the study of how people relate to each other in a community, which she attributes partially to her love of working with social media today. Her work has been in higher education, specifically with international education exchange, or study abroad programs. She cites Joseph Campbell’s idea that you should follow your bliss, and how this will lead you to opportunities that will take advantage of your skills and abilities. Having studied what she loved in college, this is how she views her work today.
Ruth has actually been involved with social technology for quite a few years, and she runs a consultancy called Manitou Heights through which she works with international educational groups and small businesses. Her work with GoAbroad.com as their Social Media Director is focused on positioning and integrating the resources they’ve already set up as the largest directory of abroad experiences, and she is working with them toward taking this into social media. Ruth is also currently in an MA program for Strategic Communications Management through Concordia University in St Paul.
Why Ruth feels social media has a place in higher education: International education could really benefit from using social media, but it has been very slow in adopting and adapting to it. In the educational field, she says “We’re always a couple of years behind business. It always takes longer for things to trickle down into education.” Most of her colleagues are not even on LinkedIn, and most of them are scared of Facebook; they see it as a ‘plaything’ for the young. Her advice to these colleagues is that the students are already there, and if you are not there, you will lose them. She would like to see international education become more involved in social media, and she hopes to be one of those people who are instrumental in getting it there.
Some of Ruth’s thoughts on the progression of social media and technology tools: To Ruth, social media is the next step on a long road from how people have always been communicating with each other. You could argue that email was a beginning form of social media. These days, she uses her iPhone as an example: ”This is our modern-day equivalent of the cuneiform tablet.” She says that social media is the next step in our path of different communication methods. Those who say that it’s just a fad don’t really get it, yet those who say that it’s the panacea of everything don’t really understand either. These things are all tools – and we forget this quite often. They are things we use to communicate with each other. People and industries alike are developing preferences, so no matter the tool you use, it still needs to be able to interface with other tools in order to be effective.
Connect with Ruth on:
photo credit: © Tania Larson Legvold, 2009. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Nice post on Ruth, Amybeth. It’s been a true pleasure working with her over the years!
Congrats, Ruth!