Erica Bilski, 34

Audience Program Manager, Pittsburgh Post-gazette Education: Carlow University, masters of business administration in project management; Chatham University, bachelor of arts in communication: public relations

What advice do you have for other young professionals in the news industry?

This industry continues to evolve and transform in order to remain relevant in a constantly changing environment. As a result, the same outdated funnels for growing a subscription base are becoming more unreliable. Instead, the focus should be on innovative and unique ways to attract and engage in building new subscription or reader funnels. My best advice is to use a data-driven approach to help you think outside the box. An example would be learning how non-subscribers use your products and read your content to convert them into subscribers.

To what current digital trends should our industry pay close attention?

With the depreciation of thirdparty cookies, publishers should stop depending on them and start building and implementing strategies to use first-party data instead. This type of data allows publishers to build a better relationship with the readers and consumers of their content.