Newhouse School alumna makes waves at premier indie podcasting company

Carly Migliori ’07 knew she wanted to go to Newhouse since she was 15. She got in, majored in magazine and graduated into the Great Recession.

Despite that, Migliori got her dream job at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, but the magazine folded soon after.

Later, she fell in love with podcasting and pivoted to her first audio job at Panoply. Then, the company radically shifted away from podcasting creation to podcast ads.

As with every other challenge or unlucky break that has come her way, Migliori turned it into an opportunity.

“At that point, Jacob Weisberg and Malcolm Gladwell, who I had worked with at Panoply, had already co-founded Pushkin Industries, and I basically emailed Jacob every month for six months asking him if he had a job for me yet because I knew that’s where I wanted to go,” Migliori says. “Shortly after, I came over to Pushkin and I’ve been here for three years. I’ve overseen the production of all the shows and just worn every hat under the sun.”

Migliori has worked all across the media world, doing graphic design, managing traditional print magazines, developing apps and now working at one of the premier indie podcasting companies. While her responsibilities have evolved as the company has expanded, Migliori served as director and then vice president of operations, managing and running every podcast the company made. In March 2022, she became vice president of partnerships. She’s weathered the turbulent world of media and come out so successful by constantly trying to learn more.

“I’m always trying to think about where the industry is heading, learning those skills and throwing my hat in the ring to be a part of the project,” Migliori says. “Even if that meant doing something on top of my normal day-to-day just so when something came up, I could raise my hand and feel confident with my skills.”

While working with advertisers to make branded content is a new challenge, she had already honed the skills needed to manage the creation of podcasts.

“It was eerily similar to what I had been doing in magazine for years,” Migliori says. “You’ve got X amount of of time that you need to fit this content into and X number of ads. You’re making it all work and it’s very similar to putting together a magazine, so in my operational brain, I was like, OK this is very easy to understand.”

Migliori has always been exceptional at the operational aspects of journalism. While she was at Newhouse she was managing editor of Jerk, a student magazine. Professor Melissa Chessher was the faculty adviser for the publication and says Migliori was an “all-star staffer.”

“The entire Jerk staff had a great deal of trust and respect for her, and she could turn and convince people to do things that other peers could not,” Chessher says. “It is a testament to her that they delivered all three issues each semester. She just knew how to get the best out of what was already a talented collection of her peers.”

Chessher says Migliori developed her managerial skills through many semesters of navigating the inner publication politics, on top of making sure that columns, articles, graphics and photos made it to each issue of Jerk. 

“Usually, in the curriculum, we lean into writing or editing—basically creating content—but she was just masterful at managing, which I think is remarkable,” Chessher says. “When she was at Newhouse there were very well-worn paths that are reinforced by the curriculum and by the industry, in who wins prizes. Usually there’s not a prize for managing all that content, so to me she was always driven by a curiosity about where things were headed and what was new.”

Migliori treasures the writing skills that Newhouse gave her and says they have been invaluable in her career. She says her classes also prepared her for what work in the media industry was actually like.

“The classes that we had in the magazine program were a really good model for how work is: We were writing, reporting and editing every single day,” Migliori says. “The way our classes were structured and how we were thrown into learning the skills firsthand really helped me.” 

Beyond preparing her for the work, her professors made sure she understood the way the media industry evolves, Migliori says. She notes that her professors were tough graders and realistic about what it takes to make it in the media world, but she loved it.

“They just made us understand what was possible,” Migliori says. “I think that is the huge differentiator between Newhouse and other communications schools. My professors worked in magazines and they knew what it was like so they could talk to us  about their personal experience and tell us how to best navigate things like getting an internship.”

Migliori was close with her professors and admitted that one of her motivators to do well was that she didn’t want to disappoint them. Chessher says the feeling was mutual and that watching Migliori leverage her talents in new and interesting ways has been a delight.

“She’s kind of classic poster child of the Newhouse curiosity and professional acumen and ascension,” Chessher says. “What I really respect and remember is she was always calm no matter what. She was never dejected or frustrated—she made the most of every opportunity and always had an amazing attitude.”

Outside of her close relationships with her professors, Migliori says her network of peers and friends were essential in finding success, especially in those tenuous five years after graduation. Chessher describes the Newhouse network as a “super premium Linkedin.”

“There’s this ecosystem of alumni that exists because of they all share Newhouse, but there’s also the supercharged turbo alumni group based on all the people who spent a million late night hours working together creating something: a newspaper, a magazine, a website, a movie, a documentary, etc.,” Chessher says. “That is an important piece of her story.”

Chessher says that as an alumna Migliori exemplified the generosity of the Newhouse Network, from arranging speakers during the Glavin Benchmark Trip to New York to speaking with students who reached out to her. Chessher is both incredibly proud of Migliori’s success and excited about what that success says about the future of the media industry.

“It delights me that we are building this amazing network of people devoted to telling stories with audio. I was overjoyed [that she was at Pushkin],” Chessher says. “Her career is a nice road map for people to keep in mind that it’s not always straight upward, sometimes you have to take a side step, and sometimes you may even have to take a back step. But it’s Carly’s attitude, work ethic, curiosity and abilities that carried her and continue to carry her.”

Migliori is excited to tackle the challenges  her new role brings. She wants to turn this into an opportunity to learn more about the business side of journalism and build on the skills she has. She knows it is a new challenge, but like all the other challenges she faced during her career, she is facing it head on.

“I think it is a core part of my DNA. It is like a fighting spirit in a lot of ways and it is always like remembering that I have all the skills. I’ve done all of this groundwork and have the skills that I learned when I was at Newhouse,”Migliori says. “It is all about trusting yourself.”