Pursuing a job in media requires you to create your own path. If you go work in consulting, you know exactly what that’s going to look like. But in this job, you have to sacrifice the idea of knowing what’s going to happen next.

Carey Albertine is changing media for the better, starting with books made for children and young adults. Here’s how she got there: After graduating from the University of Virginia with a history degree in 1996, Albertine got a job as a page at NBC, where she worked on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Saturday Night Live, and the Rosie O’Donnell Show. “At the time, I wanted to be a TV and comedy writer. Working on those shows was a great avenue for that,” she says.

She also started doing stand-up comedy.

Albertine then spent three years working for a for-profit educational company, managing a multi-million-dollar P&L, before deciding to attend business school. “I wanted to get my MBA to ultimately do something entrepreneurial,” Albertine says. “I fell in love with Tuck immediately. I love how tight knit it is. I like that it’s small and team oriented.”

At Tuck, she and Dave Gilbertson T’05 started the now-famed Frosty Jester comedy show, which continues today. “At Tuck, I spent a lot of my time putting on comedy shows,” she says. “That revealed a lot to me about what I was interested in.”

She graduated from Tuck in 2005 and became an executive recruiter at Capstone Partnership, eventually transferring to a role placing high-level positions in investment banking and corporate strategy. In the back of her mind, she still had a goal of doing something entrepreneurial. By 2012, Albertine had two young children and noticed that the children’s books she was reading did a poor job of representing girls and children of color.

“There’s been a huge sea change since, but at the time, we had to convince people that was a problem,” she says. “In addition to the social mission of this—you can’t be what you can’t see—it was also a business opportunity. There were whole markets not being served.”

So she and her friend from the University of Virginia, Saira Rao, a lawyer and former television news producer, founded In This Together Media, a company working to create more diversity in media. Their focus is on books and e-books for children and young adults that have strong themes of social justice and diversity. In This Together Media creates, develops, and markets the books with titles including Nevertheless, We Persisted: 48 Voices of Defiance, Strength, and Courage and the children’s series Kat McGee.

In 2016, Albertine moved from New York to Boulder, Colorado, where she also works as a career consultant at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She says the career she’s chosen is as rewarding as it is unpredictable.

“Pursuing a job in media requires you to create your own path. People aren’t going to show up on campus at Tuck and give you a job like this one,” Albertine says. “If you go work in consulting, you know exactly what that’s going to look like. But in this job, you have to sacrifice the idea of knowing what’s going to happen next.”