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CSC 30 Under 30 honoree Emily McMillan, Kansas State's Director of Creative Services - Social Media, tells the story of how her best friend Rachel Coe – another 30 Under 30 honoree – has honed her creative storytelling skills in both her work at Purdue as an assistant strategic comms director and in her life away from athletics.
More than this
Purdue communicator Rachel Coe intertwines storytelling and poetry throughout her work and life
by Emily McMillan – Kansas State, Director of Creative Services - Social Media @emily_mcm16
Rachel Coe is one of the best people I’ve had the privilege to know. Rachel is the Assistant Strategic Communications Director at her alma mater, Purdue University.
I met Rachel in July of 2016, when we both were hired as the Big 12 Conference Will Hancock Communications Assistants. We hit it off early and bonded over our love for Christmas, Starbucks and pizza. Both in our first job out of college, we leaned on each other to figure out how to make working in college athletics work for us.
Through the ups and downs of that year, I found a lifelong friend and I’m so excited to share her story!
Emily McMillan (left) with her friend Rachel Coe. Both were interns at the Big 12 Conference in 2016-17.
Among my friend’s many talents is her passion for writing poetry. Rachel started at Purdue as an English major before switching over to public relations, but she never lost the creative writing style.
In 2020 when a lot of people were trying out new hobbies, Rachel reignited her love for poetry in a new way. After writing a script for a Purdue athletics video, she was reminded how much she loved creative writing.
Rachel uses poetry and her creative take to elevate her student-athletes’ stories for the Purdue volleyball and softball squads. Finding a new spin, a new relationship and a new perspective that other content across the Big Ten and the country might not have. All the while discovering ways to connect the seemingly opposite worlds of poetry and athletics.
“What really drew me to poetry was the way it opens up your mind to look at things from new perspectives, trying to find a unique way to highlight them,” Rachel said. “There is a beauty to words, and I love the challenge of trying to find just the right ones to get your point across.”
That creativity played a role in the creation of Purdue volleyball’s lifestyle photo and video shoot last season. Check it out
here and
here.
Rachel Coe somewhat surprised her Purdue volleyball team with a "lifestyle" shoot, which the players loved.
“Our student-athletes loved it — I undersold the airport shoot to them — I told them we were doing a photo/video shoot at the Purdue Airport, sent them the schedule and told them to wear their own clothes, something that reflected them,” Rachel said. “When they showed up, they got more than they bargained for.”
This added space for creativity has helped Rachel write hype video scripts for program-defining moments.
“I have written some video hype scripts for Purdue over the years too,” Rachel said, “including volleyball’s NCAA hype script this year, last year when we went to Pittsburgh for regionals, and some others as well. I think any good, scripted video is really like a poem — if the goal is to pull emotion from the viewers, then isn’t it considered poetry?”
At the same time Rachel travels with her sports nine months out of the year, finding ways to disconnect from work and focus on herself is important. And one way she’s done that is through writing.
“In our field, it is easy to think about work 24/7 — from how the team is doing, social media, game notes, the next project you want to take on to highlight your program,” Rachel said. “This is a hobby of mine to de-stress from the day and help create a separation between work and personal life.”
An idea began to form after starting a poetry Instagram account on the downlow. Rachel started writing and creating content and gained a small following.
“Seeing people like my poems showed me that maybe it wasn’t half-bad, and maybe I had a place in that literary world if I wanted it,” Rachel explained.
One day a friend asked Rachel what she was going to do with all these poems she had.
“I looked back at my notebooks and that’s when I realized I had enough for a book and then some,” Rachel said. “I love reading. I always thought that it would be cool to write a book, just never thought I had it in me. I’m still not always sure I do.”
With help from a coworker, Cory Palm, who had recently published his own debut book,
Perfect Warriors, he helped show her the process of publishing a book. Suddenly, it all seemed like it could become a reality.
“This is a hobby for me, so if I didn’t want to write or edit on a day, I wouldn’t,” Rachel said. “It’s supposed to be fun, not work. But sometimes if we had down time while traveling, I would write, or I’d do it at night before going to bed as a wind-down for 10-15 minutes.”
Through a lot of passion, carving out time and off days spent at coffee shops it finally came together.
“I got lucky that themes and content all connected, so it came down to editing and ordering. In poetry, the ordering of poems is everything, so that took up a lot of time and I cut out a lot of poems to make sure the flow was just right and the story that was unfolding had information that lined up.”
Earlier this fall, Rachel self-published
The Language of my Fingers (
available on Amazon), a collection of poems that will take the reader on a journey in a style reminiscent of poets Rupi Kaur and Atticus.
“I think it’s easy for people to forget that even though working in athletics is a lifestyle, not just a job. While I love living in it, I am more than this.”
Proud of you Rachel!
Check out Rachel's self-published book, The Language of my Fingers, on Amazon.
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