Shannon Smith named Assistant Editor of teknovation
By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA
There will be a new byline appearing on teknovation.biz articles in the weeks ahead, and the name of our new Assistant Editor will be familiar to Knoxville residents.
Shannon Smith, until recently a Weekend Anchor at NBC affiliate WBIR-TV and an Emmy Award-winning Multimedia Journalist, joined the PYA family yesterday. She brings seven years of experience in journalism, content creation, writing, social media, public relations, and media relations to the role which will further expand teknovation.biz and Teknovation Weekend with video products.
The Magna Cum Laude graduate of Auburn University in 2015 where she served as President of the Mortar Board Honor Society will also add her expertise to PYA’s award-winning video production team that won two “Telly Awards” for its documentary produced for 490 BioTech, the inaugural winner of the PYA-sponsored “Ballard Innovation Award.” Titled “Glow | The 490 BioTech Story,” the documentary received a Silver Telly for “Non-Broadcast Documentary: Individual” and a Bronze Telly in the category for “Branded Content: Science and Technology.”
“When we launched the search for an Assistant Editor, we were looking for a great writer,” said Marty Brown, PYA President and Chief Executive Officer. “What we found in Shannon was a person who could not only help us to continue to tell the stories of entrepreneurs pursuing their passion and established businesses focusing on their continued growth, but to do so through a new dimension – video. And, with our less than two-year old video operation that is focused on our clients, we have added an on-camera presence to round out that award-winning team.”
After graduating from Auburn, Smith served for a little more than two years at KFDA-TV in Amarillo, TX before joining WBIR in January 2018. She won her Emmy earlier this year in the hard news category of the 2022 “Midsouth Regional Emmy Awards” competition. Smith was a three-time first place winner in the 2021 “Golden Press Card Awards” for series writing, feature reporting, and pandemic reporting.
