A timeline of our growth
Milestones
2017
Benjamin Pu founded Yung AAJA/the AAJA Young Professionals' Affinity Group, first as a Facebook meme group and a way for early-career journalists to meet one another at AAJA convention.
2018-2019
Yung AAJA keeps growing… and growing… on Facebook. Yung elects a small board of directors to do additional programming and help director Ben Pu plan convention sessions. In fall 2019, Ben hands leadership to Beena Raghavendran.
2020-2021
In 2020, Yung goes virtual, with trainings, social nights and sessions at convention. In 2021, Yung is at 600+ members on Facebook, 200+ members in Slack. After feedback from members, Yung moves most of its communication to AAJA Slack and starts running Q&A style trainings with AAJA members in the Yung AAJA channel. It co-signs its first statement with AAJA HQ directed at Conde Nast and adopts the formal AAJA Young Professionals Network name, and uses “Yung AAJA” within the AAJA family.