Olivia is a content creator with extensive experience of 20+ years in print, broadcast, multimedia and digital journalism, as well as with local, national and international reporting. She has worked on stories for several media organizations throughout her career, including ABC News, Good Morning America, CNN, CNN Business, 60 Minutes, Al Jazeera, NY1 News and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Follow Olivia for day-to-day updates on her work @LivNews and #LivWell.

CURRENT WORK

As Executive Producer of Next Generation Storytelling at ABC7 and The Walt Disney Company, Olivia leads and manages a team of Community Journalists covering Southern California for the No. 1 news station in the No. 2 market in the country. Her reporters often focus on underrepresented communities, giving a voice to all who live in Los Angeles. As the station’s inaugural Executive Producer of Next Generation Storytelling, Olivia continues to build and oversee her team’s workflow in addition to focusing on new storytelling techniques and formats. She approves scripts and videos for broadcast, digital and social, and she copy-edits web stories for clarity and accuracy using AP Style and SEO best practices. She understands the importance of using innovative methods to create visual stories, series and specials for emerging audiences across platforms, from social media to streaming to television. Olivia also supervises other station reporters and producers in addition to her team, and she reviews, reads and approves newscasts as a dayside EP. She often leads morning editorial meetings for the newsroom too.

Olivia is a multimedia expert, proficient in shooting, writing, editing, reporting, producing and publishing content for both television and digital audiences. She regularly gives feedback on performance and trains her team and other station employees to learn new skills. In addition, she develops and leads trainings for ABC OTV employees and talent across the country and teaches new equipment. Olivia is also an expert at remote and virtual training and managing. She leads by example and contributes to reporting, including creating, hosting and producing an in-depth streaming and broadcast series called Hidden History. She also has a social media series she created called Sound Smart. While she is an expert with DSLR and C100 cameras, she also specializes in mobile journalism, producing entire pieces with mobile-only technology.

Olivia’s first role at ABC was with the network, where she helped build their digital video team from the start and worked as a reporter for both broadcast and digital. She was one of the first digital video hires for ABC News. She then moved to Good Morning America, as a founding member of the GMA digital video team, helping build and develop content and workflows for and through the launch of GoodMorningAmerica.com in the role of Deputy Video Supervisor. Olivia has experience working as a correspondent across digital platforms for live reports, streams and segments as well as reporting live for network television and special reports. She was one of the first to host and produce for ABC News Live and for ABC’s Facebook show On Location.

Olivia started working at ABC in New York before becoming the first digital video journalist and digital point person for the network in the Los Angeles bureau. From there, she grew into new roles on evolving teams. Olivia has experience operating as a one-woman band, and she has done everything from in-depth magazine-style and documentary pieces to experimenting with new technology for storytelling.

Olivia has created, hosted and anchored different series and video franchises, including a live stream show called Healthy Living, an Instagram Story series called On Trend, explainer videos on everyday oddities and health and science facts called Did You Know That? and an interactive quiz show called Know The News. She created and produced the investigative series Underground, which you can find on Hulu and OTT platforms along with other Digital Features. She also produced one of the first series for Facebook Watch.

Also skilled in digital marketing, Olivia knows how to expertly strategize and plan social media content, utilizing analytics for optimal posting times, curating platform-specific content and maximizing audience engagement.

HONORS & AWARDS

Olivia co-produced a documentary, Dead Horse Bay, which was the first-ever piece to be nominated and to win an Emmy Award for ABC News’ digital unit. She won an Emmy Award as part of the team at Good Morning America as well. Olivia was also nominated for an Emmy Award as a television correspondent for ABC News’ special report of the Solar Eclipse. Olivia has also been nominated for a number of Los Angeles Emmy Awards for her work with ABC7.

During her time at the digital unit, ABCNews.com was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Website. The company was later awarded again with the Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence two years in a row while Olivia was there. Olivia also reported for the social news team, which was nominated for the Shorty Awards.

Olivia has won a number of Edward R. Murrow Awards and has been nominated for a number of Los Angeles Emmy Awards for her work with ABC7 as well. She was also the Executive Producer of a TikTok piece nominated in the social media category for the Los Angeles Press Club Awards. ABC7 also won a Golden Mike Award while Olivia was an EP with the station.

Olivia’s reporting on FGC/FGM in the U.S. was nominated for a Webby Award. She has held a CNN Fellowship, an Emerging Journalist Fellowship and she has traveled abroad on a Fulbright grant.

A California native, Olivia began her journalism career at 15 with a front-page exposé for her town newspaper about a rat problem at the local high school. She wrote a weekly column on world issues for the paper as well. Olivia was also the Editor-in-Chief of her high school newspaper.

Olivia has also served on two Advisory Boards for the University of California, Riverside, with their Women in Leadership Executive Program and their Design Thinking Executive Program.

Her skills have earned her a spot on the Coach Foundation as a top media coach.

EDUCATION

Olivia earned her master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she received honors for her reporting and for her thesis on a mysterious food allergy. One of her investigative, environmental pieces was featured at the program’s first Innovation Showcase.

Olivia earned her bachelor’s degree from New York University, where she studied communications and liberal arts. During her time at NYU, Olivia wrote for the school paper as well as literary and poetry magazines. She also spent a semester living abroad in Paris, France.

Education is one of Olivia’s passions and she continually takes courses to keep learning, including ones on teaching and writing. She has also taken the Complete AI Guide course on Udemy, where she gained hands-on experience with prompt engineering and artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT-4, DALL-E 2 and Midjourney, among others. These tools are geared towards content creation, code generation and business ideation, and she applies these learned skills to drive efficiency and creativity in her professional projects.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Olivia’s passion for teaching and mentoring extends beyond her day job. After work, she teaches graduate and undergraduate journalism as an Adjunct Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. She has taught a number of courses, including Visual Journalism, and focuses on teaching students video and strategy for all platforms. She’s also incorporated lessons on the ethics of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and how to effectively use it for storytelling. Olivia collaborates between her roles with ABC7 and USC on new learning opportunities. She co-created, pitched and organized a specialized race and culture internship between the two.

Olivia has an entrepreneurial spirit, leading her to start both her own business and blog. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of Media Consulting Coaches, where she offers media training services and workshops specializing in media relations, on-camera presentation, executive coaching, public speaking, pitching to media and content creation. Her clients include the University of Southern California, Simply Salad, entrepreneurs, influencers, media professionals and more. Olivia is also the Founder and CEO of her company and blog, Get Savvy with Social, LLC, which specializes in media, tech and lifestyle content. She built both sites (and this one!) from scratch.

Olivia has moderated panels, guest lectured at universities and spoken at events about her work and topics she covers. She has appeared on CBS News Sunday Morning to talk about social media, and on C-SPAN to discuss the future of journalism. Olivia has also been profiled by media outlets, including As Told By Women, Confessions of a Fit Chick and Eat My News.

When Olivia isn’t reporting, she’s most likely writing, traveling, exploring and staying active (she is a jump rope Junior Olympian!). She enjoys volunteer work and mentoring other journalists. Olivia is a member of the Online News Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Journalism & Women Symposium, Women@Disney and the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators.

Olivia is also a children’s book author of a series called Dog Detectives Jacob and Bricks. The series is based on stories she created with her father when she was a child. She’s done public book readings and has sold the book in stores and on Amazon. She worked with a Ukrainian illustrator to design the series.

Olivia worked as a journalist in New York City, the No. 1 market in the country for news, for a decade before relocating to the West Coast. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, son and dog. Fun fact (if you’ve made it all the way down here!), her middle name is Maeve.