Lives of Consequence
Sule Aygoren '01
Editor-in-Chief, ALM's Real Estate Media Group
Sule Aygoren '01 didn't plan to stay for long in her first job out of college as an editorial assistant. But she's still there a dozen years later -- now as a high-ranking editor for New York City-based ALM, a media company with several legal and business publications under its moniker.
"I was only supposed to be here for a couple of years to get some experience," she says of her initial plans. "I had no interest in real estate or business reporting. But the job gave me opportunities to get my bylines on pieces, instead of merely proofreading and filing."
Although she intended to leave for a larger publishing company, Aygoren found her passion at ALM, where she is editor-in-chief of Real Estate Forum magazine and the online publication GlobeSt.com, ALM's daily news bureau, as well as multi housing adviser for the firm's RealShare Conference Series.
"It's actually very interesting, especially when you live in New York," she says. "Once you understand how they work, you get to know how much the capital markets mean to the economy. It's a lot more complicated than the traditional media would have you believe."
Aygoren grew up in Rockaway, N.Y., and first considered coming to HWS on the advice of a high school teacher; a visit to campus sealed the deal.
"I liked the fact that it was small, and that you were actually taught by professors and not grad students," she says.
In high school, she thought she'd study medicine but a volunteer gig at a hospital changed her mind. She realized she wasn't cut out for the field, so she pursued her other interest, writing, and graduated cum laude in English and Media and Society in 2001.
Aygoren credits her faculty adviser, Professor of Media and Society Linda Robertson, with helping her narrow her focus in the communications professions. "I only knew I wanted to go into writing and had a vague idea that I wanted to go into magazine publishing," she says.
The publishing industry has had its challenges in recent years, with the astronomical growth in digital media, and Aygoren is honest about the challenges, but optimistic, too.
"We've taken our hits," she says. "When the general business community pulled back in 2008, we dropped our page counts, our issue counts, our headcount, our freelance budget. But in the past couple of years, we've really come back."
Aygoren notes that her company has also diversified beyond print.
"Any media company has to in order to survive. It's a three-pronged strategy: print, digital, events. It's very much an integrated platform. Beyond the print publication and website, we deliver e-mail news alerts and offer a conference series," says Aygoren, who often speaks at industry events herself.
Bottom line? Stay competitive, she says.
"No matter what, if you're a leader in your field, if you put out a good product and have a good readership base that you value, there will always be room for print publications -- and room for you at a print magazine. Just be prepared to go beyond print."