“You don’t need an Ivy League education to be successful,” said Brea Douglas.
Douglas is a 2009 graduate of Grambling State University, where she studied mass communication with an emphasis in the field of broadcast. When she was not devoting her time to academia, Douglas spent a lot of her time in the GSU-TV Center.
Under the supervision of Alan Blakeney, director, she got her start working on numerous projects that would catapult her intense interest in the fast-paced world of mass media.
Douglas’s campus involvement also included KGRM 91.5, The Gramblinite, and women’s basketball before an unsuspected injury.
With all the information GSU equipped Douglas with, she was ready to set sail to a sea of real world experiences.
On the eve of her senior year, she left the small town of Grambling to go to the big city of Washington, D.C for an internship of a lifetime.
With the help of a close friend passing along pertinent information, Douglas was able to land a three-month summer internship at the White House.
Not many people can say they’ve had the privilege of working in the White House under the presidency of the first African-American president, but Brea Douglas can.
“To say I was a part of the first Black president presidency was life-changing,” said Douglas.
As a White House intern, her duties included, but were not limited to data entry, event planning and organizing and the gift department.
Douglas hosted a variety of events one in particular called “State Arrival” where the prime minister of India came to speak about several topics and another event geared towards astronomy that consisted of NASA tents.
Looking back on some of the most memorable moments during her internship, she relished witnessing the first Black family in action and opportunities in which the interns were able to hear wise words from President Obama.
Douglas returned to GSU to conquer another milestone in life, graduation.
Six-months after graduation she was able to take what she absorbed from her internship at the White House along with everything she had studied and learned at Grambling to her first major gig.
Now working as a one-man band reporter for NBC 10 news in El Dorado, Ark. she is setting the foundation for her future ambitions.
“No, I don’t want to be the next Oprah Winfrey, but I do want to do Oprah like things such as own my own talk show.
“I want to be able to reach people for the kingdom of God and be elevated to God’s glory,” said Brea Douglas when describing some of her aspirations she hopes to foresee.