Lauren Kyger
CITIZENSHIP
United States
HINRICH SCHOLARSHIP
Tsinghua UniversityBeijing, China
MA in Global Business Journalism, Class of 2016
Co-sponsor: Hinrich Foundation
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
Communications Specialist - Digital and Social MediaMcKinsey & Company, New York, United States
“Success for me is happiness. It’s important for me to go to bed each night with the satisfaction that I have learned one new thing about the world that day.”
Alumni background
Lauren is a communications and media expert with extensive experience in content creation, digital marketing, social media management and audience growth across various digital platforms.
Lauren presently leads digital and social media communications for McKinsey & Company’s Social, Healthcare & Public Entities (SHaPE) practice as a Communications Specialist. She is responsible for driving SHaPE’s digital engagement strategy and creating compelling content to engage and grow audiences on various social media and digital platforms.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Lauren served as Senior Manager for Digital Content at the National Committee on US-China Relations, a non-profit organization promoting greater understanding between the US and China. She also worked at the Hinrich Foundation as an Associate Editor at online educational trade magazine, TradeVistas, as well as a Research Associate focused on international trade research.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Arizona State University and then obtained her Master's Degree in Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University in Beijing as a Hinrich Foundation Global Trade Leader Scholar.
A conversation with Lauren leaves happiness in its trail. Brimming with positivity and a passionate urge to bring the world closer together, this Hinrich Global Trade Leader believes that sharing information and communication is the key to resolving differences. She strongly believes trade industry is the fulcrum that can support inclusion objectives common to countries across the world.
Chinese 101
Lauren is a Hinrich Global Trade Leader who completed her master’s degree in Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University, China. Journalism, business and China have always been Lauren’s three big interests: it has been her dream to fuse them into her professional goals. “I think signing up for a Chinese 101 class in high school proved to be a turning point in my life.”
One of the highlights of Lauren’s scholar experience was when her family was able to visit her in China for the first time. She is pictured here with her parents and two sisters during a memorable trip to Shanghai, China.
Little did Lauren know that her love for the Chinese language and culture would be a story that will find an exciting trajectory. Mandarin stayed with her through Arizona State University, where she pursued a major in Journalism and a minor in Chinese language. Lauren graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2013. Her focus was business journalism.
Prior to her sojourn to China as a Hinrich Global Trade Leader Scholar, she proved her mettle as an investigative journalist in Washington, D.C., by contributing to an award-winning investigative series as a finance reporting intern.
Lauren is presented with a prestigious George Polk Award for Excellence in Business Reporting at an award ceremony in New York City in 2014.
“Hinrich Foundation started me on this path that I am on today!” Her dream to combine her three major interests came to life when the Foundation gave her the opportunity to complete her postgraduate degree in Global Business Journalism at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2016.
Building bridges across US-China trade relations
During her internship as a Research Assistant at the Hinrich Foundation, Lauren conducted research on a broad range of topics related to global trade and investment, focusing specifically on the FDI environment in China. In addition to executing research projects and writing policy briefs, Lauren created a website dedicated to FDI.
Her previous role as Associate Editor for TradeVistas, Lauren researched, write and edit published articles and graphics on current trade issues. She also assists the Editor-in-Chief with project coordination, content generation, social media and web strategy, as well as external engagement and readership expansion initiatives.
Impacting the world
Amid all of her winning traits of ambition, perseverance and unassuming brilliance, perhaps what drives Lauren hardest is her insatiable curiosity. Her vision is to keep researching interesting trade topics day in and day out and keep writing about them. She wants to keep shedding light on the processes and ways and means of international trade, and to go on telling her stories in a way that brings people of various cultures together.
“Just simple explanations of how trade affects people and their livelihoods can influence their way of thinking and cultivate greater understanding amongst countries,” Lauren emphasized.