Small college helps big dreams come true

As a teenager, Daniela Cintron ’09 wasn’t interested in Piedmont University. What could a small school 20 minutes from her parents’ Rabun County home have to do with her dreams to work for a network like NBC in big cities like New York or San Diego?

Cintron decided to give Piedmont a try and visited the campus. While she was impressed that as a freshman she could “actually touch a camera,” it was the caliber of the professors that sold her. Professor of Mass Communications Dale Van Cantfort, a former radio station owner, became a mentor and friend.

After graduation, Cintron did work for NBC, starting with Telemundo in Atlanta as an account executive. NBCUniversal is Telemundo’s parent company, and it chose her from 3,000 candidates to train as a sales associate in New York. San Diego still seemed out of reach, since the parent company didn’t own a station there. One year after she moved to New York, she was sent to help start up a new station: Telemundo 20 in San Diego.

“Who would have thought that this small college I thought was not going to get me anywhere would get me everything and more than I could have expected?” Cintron said.

Cintron married, started a family and last year returned to North Georgia to be near her mom and far from the fast-paced life she had been living. She settled in with some hometown journalism, too, as the social media strategist for the Northeast Georgia Region of Community Newspapers Inc. (CNI). It was her friend and mentor Van Cantfort who suggested Cintron talk with CNI Regional Publisher Alan NeSmith.

Cintron left that position in July and now is the social media coordinator for Bader Scott Injury Lawyers, a growing law firm based in Atlanta.