Samara Sodos

Samara Sodos serves on the journalism faculty at the University of South Florida, teaching multimedia reporting. She also is an associate professor at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida focusing on documentary storytelling and studio production. Sam is a veteran communications consultant, drawing on more than 30 years of experience in public relations, crisis management and broadcast news reporting. Sam spent the last decade leading communications departments for several agencies and corporations including AT&T, Port Tampa Bay and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Sam spent most of her journalism career as a general assignment reporter at WFLA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Tampa. There she chased hurricanes, covered local and national political campaigns. She also reported on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as many high-profile criminal cases. During her time in Tampa, she also wrote for the Tampa Tribune and served as a contributing correspondent for NBC News. Previously she was a general assignment reporter at the NBC affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, and served as the executive producer for the first news operation at Roanoke’s Fox affiliate. She also worked as an anchor, reporter, and producer for the NBC affiliate in Milwaukee, WTMJ-TV.

Sam’s reporting and public relations writing have received multiple accolades, including Emmy awards and the national Edward R. Murrow award. Following her graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993, Sam lived in Israel, where she worked for the “Jerusalem Post.” Sam is a J-school alum. She fondly recalls “Campus Update,” a half-hour live weekly newscast and filing her very first stories as a reporter for the “Badger Herald.” She received a Master of Arts in Social and Emerging Media at the University of Tampa.