The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the workforce and make a difference in their community. We are pleased to share a series of young alumni profiles, and their advice to both current and recently graduated students.
Megan Coyne, SAS’18 Is the Social Media Manager for the Office of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. The following text has been edited for clarity and space; for the full interview see the video above.
What brought you to Rutgers in the first place?
Just growing up in New Jersey. everyone knows Rutgers, but I have two older siblings who both went to Rutgers. So when I was applying to schools, it was a no brainer that I would also go there. I applied to maybe two other schools, but I really wanted to go to Rutgers. I wanted to be a part of a big school. I love New Jersey. I didn’t want to leave and it all worked out.
Did you see your two siblings there? They both went to Rutgers, when did they graduate?
My sister graduated in 2015, my brother graduated in 2017 and I have a younger sister who’s a senior at Rutgers now. Then I have a younger brother in high school, who will hopefully be going there within the next few years.
So you were all there at the same time?
I overlapped with my older brother and my younger sister, which was fun.
Was there some avoiding in the dining hall or did you eat together? Which way did it go?
Yeah, me and my younger sister spent a lot of time together, we actually took a class together, which was fun. It confused our professor because he couldn’t comprehend that we weren’t twins, that we are siblings. That was fun.
Was that one of the more meaningful experiences at Rutgers? Tell us a little bit about kind of things you did.
It was fun to have a class with my sister, but most of my time at Rutgers was spent with the Rutgers Democrats. I joined that in the beginning of my freshman year. And then that kind of changed me; it kind of helped me get to this moment. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do when I went to Rutgers. But I was really interested in politics. So I joined the Rutgers Democrat’s Club, joined the board, and that’s how I started meeting all these candidates and elected officials and people who work in politics in New Jersey. Then that’s how I got involved with Phil Murphy’s campaign and then I interned on that. Then I just stuck with it. I interned when he became Governor in the Governor’s office. When I graduated I luckily got a job there. But yes, it’s awesome.
Were you politically active before you joined Rutgers?
Not really. I was interested in it in high school, but there wasn’t really a way to get involved at my high school. So it was just a personal thing that I kept up with. And then at Rutgers, it really took off.
You were also a part of Eagleton; was that something you joined because of the Democrats Club or was it something separate?
When I was a freshman, I took a Byrne seminar with Ruth Mandel, who was the director of Eagleton and I really, really admired her. Then my sophomore year, I was her research assistant. So I was involved in Eagleton since the beginning of college. So then when there was time to apply junior year for the undergraduate associates’ program and it seemed kind of a no brainer that I would apply, especially since it was obviously something I was interested in. I applied and luckily I was accepted. And then I was a part of that for a year and a half, which was a really interesting experience.
Can you tell us about it?
The program has 25 students and I think all three Rutgers campuses can apply, but my year it was actually just New Brunswick students. Your fall semester of your senior year. It’s an internship seminar. Everyone has to do an internship over the summer. And then you talk about what everyone’s internship was. There’s also a lot of really cool guest speakers and one of the best parts of the program is how it connects you to other people throughout New Jersey and I was really lucky because my best friends were in the class with me. It was a really great experience.
You worked with Dr Mandel; she escaped the Holocaust, was a legend in politics and political research, both at Rutgers and beyond. What was that like?
It was a really rewarding experience. She was just such an inspiring figure, but she really, she really pushed me especially as her research assistant to go further and to go after what I wanted. She really pushed me to get involved in politics, because I was a little bit on the fence about it. But she always encouraged me and she was really, really great to be around.
What do you think you took away most from that internship and working with her?
Hmmm…I guess to just not be afraid to go after what you want.
The importance of empathy is something that I really learned at Rutgers. And I think that that comes into my everyday work; understanding where people are coming from and what they're going through. Respecting that and trying to help them.
In that vein, tell us a little bit of what you’re doing now. It was profiled by the (New York) Times, but give us a little bit of an idea.
I work for Governor Phil Murphy on his communications team as a digital assistant. [Editor’s note: As of publishing, Megan is now the Governor’s Social Media Manager.]
His communications team is split into three. There’s speech writing, press, and digital. For digital we do all the social media, all of the websites, all of the multimedia stuff. It’s actually just a team of three of us. It’s our digital director Pearl, our deputy digital director Edwin, and then me. Edwin is our photographer so he’s always out with the governor photographing him, taking videos of him and then Pearl and I work together a lot on the writing for the accounts and the uploading of content to them.
We manage three accounts. The Governor’s account, the First Lady’s account and the State of New Jersey account. When Governor Murphy took office there were no social media accounts for the Governor or for the State. Pearl and Edwin created the accounts from scratch and built them up. And one thing that Pearl created was the State of New Jersey Twitter account and it always had this little bit of a personality, but she couldn’t dedicate as much time as she wanted to it because she was managing all these other accounts.
When I came in in June 2019 we started having all these conversations about how we could make the state of New Jersey accounts more creative, more relatable, and more authentic to New Jersey’s identity because obviously as a state we have a very distinct sort of personality. We decided to start doing it so the post started getting progressively weirder and then there were few that really took off, that got our name on the map.
The most famous of course was last December, someone tweeted at us “who let New Jersey have a Twitter account” and we responded, “your mom” and it got 500,000 likes. That’s when people really started to pay attention to us. And then after that, that was it. There was really no turning back. And that’s when we started capturing everyone’s attention.
Do you have a personal favorite?
Well, it’s really hard. There was one last October. That was one of our first weird ones that I’m pretty proud of, and it was “Imagine pumping your own gas” with all these emojis of people throwing up the idea of pumping your own gas is so horrific to New Jersey that it physically makes you ill. So that’s one I was really proud of, of course, “your mom” it’s the gold standard. So that one will always have a special place in my heart.
And then we’ve had a lot of interesting ones during the pandemic, that I’m proud of because it’s public health messaging in a different creative way that connects with people.
So we’ve done the sheriff of wash your hands, which is an emoji sheriff made out of soap and then we did this whole series of “stay X feet apart”. Right. So instead of saying 6 feet apart. It was stay one Bruce Springsteen apart because he’s just about six feet. Or stay one Bon Jovi apart, stay 20 bagels apart, so that was fun. I’m pretty proud of those
Did your team come up with that on your own?
It’s mostly me and Pearl and our personalities mesh really well. We work really well together. We bounce ideas off each other all the time. It’s been harder since I’m doing it from home, when we were in the office. We sat next to each other. So we were divided by this flimsy cubicle wall. We would just talk over that all day, or I would just go sit in her cubicle a lot. It’s definitely been a little bit difficult to adjust.
Now we’re in the ninth month of doing this so I guess we’ve adjusted. We’re both Jersey girls. Both born here, grew up here, have lived here forever. So we understand the ethos of the state really well, and both love the state. I think that that genuine love for New Jersey really shines through and helps make the account so successful.
What I found most valuable during my time at Rutgers was that in such a big diverse school, it really opens your eyes to so many different experiences and viewpoints. I think that really shaped my belief in the importance of public service…
I think one of the things I was really interested in is, you know, we’re heading into month nine of the pandemic. I think I left my office on the 17th of March. What’s the difference, if you’re talking social media now vs social media a year ago? With the election, with everything, how does that inform what you’re doing?
Well, I think it exposes the importance of social media. It’s so important for connecting with people and providing people with these real time spur of the moment updates. We’ve seen our social media channels across the Governor, the First Lady. the state of New Jersey grow rapidly during the last few months. It’s been such an unsure time that people really need, depend on, and are eager for information from a reliable source in real time on what’s happening, what resources are available, what the rules are and what are the best safety tips. We’ve definitely been leaning more heavily on it than what you’ve seen in the past. I write way more social posts today than I was a year ago at this point. But I know how important it is to people, so it’s all worth it to us.
Obviously running those different accounts, you have to make sure the tones are separate. I assume there would be a tiff if Governor Murphy responded to Andrew Cuomo with “your mom.” How do you keep those separate?
Yes. As you said, each account has its own tone. So obviously the State of New Jersey embodies this sarcastic,bold and weird kind of voice, and then the Governor’s account really embodies his voice. When you work for someone you kind of learn how they talk. So the governor really is very funny. Obviously, he would never Tweet “your mom”, but he does have a sense of humor. And so he does enjoy doing funny or weird posts once in a while.
We’ve done a few memes on his account. He really likes when we can make a joke. He loves to do that a few times on his account. And a few times on NJ Gov. We’d started fights about what state has the best pizza, which is obviously New Jersey and then other states have gotten involved. Then the Governor will get involved and then he’s gone back and forth a few times with Governors Cuomo and Lamont about what state has the best pizza and it’s all in good fun and it reflects his voice.
Here’s a question. I understand if you can’t reveal it; does the governor ever tweet from his own account?
He reviews and approves everything that goes out on his account. And then, yeah, sometimes he has ideas and he’ll send them to us and we’ll work on them with him, but everything that’s on his account, he signed off on so nothing goes out on his account that he doesn’t see.
You were involved with politics a little bit at Rutgers. Now obviously you’re involved in how things go on the actual working side of it and you’ve done a little bit of campaigning. How do you feel your experiences at Rutgers inform what you’re doing now?
Being at Rutgers led me to this. I think that while I was at Rutgers I got these internships or jobs, but a lot of what I found most valuable during my time at Rutgers was that in such a big diverse school, it really opens your eyes to so many different experiences and viewpoints. I think that really shaped my belief in the importance of public service and it definitely shaped my political views on what we can do to make the city and the country and the world a better place for people. Definitely being at Rutgers opened my eyes to that, especially compared to where I grew up, the university community was just such a stark difference. It really, really helped me decide that, this is what I wanted to be involved in.
Are there any specific lessons at Rutgers that you learned that you know come into your day to day?
That’s a good question. I don’t know, The importance of empathy is something that I really learned at Rutgers. And I think that that comes into my everyday work; understanding where people are coming from and what they’re going through. Respecting that and trying to help them.
I asked you this before and I just wanted to get it recorded. Where did baby Yoda come from on the New Jersey government accounts?
It came from last year when baby Yoda became a thing. I guess it was actually just about a year ago, right? Baby Yoda became a thing and it was all over the internet.
So I went into work one morning and I was asking Pearl if she had seen the baby Yoda meme yet. So we are looking at it together and we are meditating on what would be a good NJ gov baby Yoda meme. And then the next day Pearl came in and she had been listening to an old song that’s has a line in it “Luke Skywalkin on these haters.” So she heard it, and then she thought of baby Yoda. She came in and we photoshopped baby Yoda holding New Jersey, and then we posted it with the lyrics “Luke Skywalkin on these haters”, and it just took off, people loved it. So we decided that it should be our profile picture. We changed it to that.
And then a few months ago, we tried to change it to something else. We really didn’t want to change it to something else. Because we couldn’t think of anything better. But a lot of people were telling us that we needed to change it. So we changed it. And then there was an enormous backlash. People were so upset that we took baby Yoda away. So we changed it back. It was up for less than 15 minutes, the new picture. So we changed it back to baby Yoda and then a few weeks ago Pearl designed a new version with Baby Yoda wearing a Santa hat and holding a Christmas tree and there’s a menorah and Diwali lights and all this stuff for the holiday season.
What’s the next big thing for NJGov?
I don’t know. So many of our ideas on NJGov just come to us in real time. That’s kind of, I think, why the account does so well is that it feels authentic. That’s because me and Pearl, if we have an idea we’re passionate about, we just go with it. We don’t really plan things out in advance. We don’t harp on things too long because then I feel things get bogged down. And we just like to really live in the moment on that account. So I don’t know. It depends, tomorrow, we could wake up and there could be a brand-new meme on the internet and then NJGov will put its own spin on it. And that could be the next big thing.
That’s awesome. I do love the sunset pictures, by the way.
New Jerseyans love their sunset pictures.
When did that become a thing?
Since the account started people have been tagging us in their photos. And then when the account really took off, we started getting tagged and a lot more. Then I think since we started sharing them a lot more people post more since we’re sharing them. Then we made a meme about it a few months ago, it’s a photo and it was “nobody”. And then it was New Jerseyans every evening, and it was a photo of a sunset and then next to the photo of Danny Devito holding a cell phone. So that one did really well. We are proud of that.
You’ve just graduated, two years out. What advice do you have for other young alumni and soon to be graduated students?
I guess we just see that it’s a weird time to be a recent graduate. It’s a weird time to be graduating and so just go with your gut in all situations. Rutgers prepares you well, not only in an academic sense but Rutgers prepares you really well for the real world. And I think that those sort of skills will help you get very far. I think that Rutgers grads all do very well for themselves. And I think that everyone should have that sort of confidence in themselves.
How do you plan to stay involved with Rutgers?
Through the alumni committees, the young alumni committee. My first year I don’t think I was very good about that. But now that I have some more time, I can get more involved. I definitely want to do one of those Rutgers mentoring programs for students who are interested in politics and government.
And what’s your biggest point of pride as a scarlet knight?
My biggest point of pride…I would say that my biggest point of pride right now definitely has to be how integral Rutgers has been in the fight against coronavirus with the rapid tests that we developed pretty early on that was just absolutely remarkable. And I think that state schools in general don’t get the credit they deserve. I know Rutgers doesn’t get the credit it deserves. And it’s such an incredible institution with some of the smartest people. And I think people are starting to realize that, and that makes me really happy.
We appreciate the opportunity to have you as our spotlight and we look forward to the next big meme!
Thank you so much for having me!
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA’s Young Alumni Committee is pleased to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys recent Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
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