Find Your Mentor

Christina Zdanowicz is a Senior Writer at CNN Digital. She creates distinctive, audience-focused content, mostly stories about real people — from breaking news to longer-term projects. She is an expert at framing audience callouts. Previously, she managed the evening shift for the Social Discovery Team, the network’s hub for social media newsgathering. Assigning, writing and editing stories, verifying user-generated content and making tough editorial decisions were all part of her role.

One highlight of her day was mentoring interns, whom she recruited, hired and supervised. They’ve gone on to full-time jobs at CNN, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, NPR and The Wall Street Journal. Outside of work, she has been part of various mentoring programs and previously volunteered with teens for 10+ years at a teen-led journalism non-profit. Before her time at CNN, she worked for the Chicago Tribune, CBS 2 Chicago and COSMOS, an Australian science magazine.