Victoria LaPoe, Ph.D.

LaPoe focuses on media diversity, digital media and marketing strategy of media. Previously, she served as broadcasting and film coordinator and assistant professor at Western Kentucky University’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting.

She received her Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2013. She is co-author of Oil and Water: Media Lessons from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Oil and Water (2013) explores the visuals and narratives associated with both disasters. She also co-authored Indian Country: Telling a Story in a Digital Age (2017), which evaluates how digital media impact storytelling within Native communities. Indian Country contains interviews with more than 40 Native journalists around the country. She has a book in-press with a Scripps college Political Communication certificate program director, Dr. Ben LaPoe:  Expressing Black Voices: The Role of the Historic Press in the Digital Age.

LaPoe is a former vice president of the Native American Journalists, ending her term in 2019 and a NAJA lifetime member. She has co-run the Native American Journalists Association Fellows student newsroom and is also a former AEJMC officer for both the Minorities and Communication division and Commission on the Status of Women.

Prior to work in academia, she was an awarding-winning television journalist who worked in the industry for more than 10 years. She is a former television news producer, media client strategist and marketing communication specialist, where she worked with local, national and international media-related clients.