Naima Small (C’25)
Major: Communication with a concentration in Advocacy and Activism; minor in Africana Studies
Hometown: Southington, Connecticut
Post-grad plans: Human Resources job rotation at Citi, and then law school
Even before arriving at Penn, Naima Small knew she wanted to major in Communication. “I applied to Penn because of Annenberg,” she said. “I was particularly interested in the concentration around advocacy and activism, subjects I was writing about in high school.”
As a teenager, she created an online blog, called “Dear Dark Skinned Girl,” that covered issues facing Black girls and women, from media representation to colorism. She continued her journalism career at Penn at 34th Street Magazine, winning Writer of the Year from the Daily Pennsylvanian in 2023.
“I’m proud to have been a writer and editor for 34th Street Magazine for most of my time at Penn,” she said. “As one of the few Black writers in the newsroom, I’m happy that I was able to add to the diversity of the stories that we produced. Street also helped me combine my interests in popular culture and social justice, and many of my articles were inspired by things I learned in my Annenberg courses.”
During her senior year, she was an undergraduate fellow with the Center for Media at Risk, where she spent her time meticulously researching and writing her honors thesis, which explored Black women’s online discussions of intraracial, gender–based violence through the hashtag #ProtectBlackWomen on Instagram.
Outside of the classroom, Small, a Benjamin Franklin Scholar, was involved in many student organizations at Penn, like Penn NAACP, the Communication Major Association and Carriage Senior Society.
What will Small miss most about Annenberg? “Being a part of such an engaging and vibrant academic community,” she said. “There are so many ways to study Communication — I have friends who are interested in health communication, others in marketing, others in scholarly research. I loved how Annenberg enabled me to not only see the diversity of ways I could use my degree, but also learn from people who had much different academic interests than me.”
As a newly minted grad, Small moved to New York City for a two-year job rotational program in human resources at global banking institution Citi, with future aspirations of attending law school.
