Career Services Staff
Ernest R. Sotomayor, Assistant Dean, Career Services
Room 2M07A, 212-854-4922
es2387(at)columbia.edu
Ernest R. Sotomayor directs the Journalism School’s efforts in career counseling, assisting students in finding opportunities such as internships, fellowships and fulltime employment in print, broadcast and online media fields. He joined Columbia in February 2005 after 16 years as an editor at Newsday in Long Island and in New York City, and specializes in issues related to print and digital journalism.
Ernest Sotomayor began his career as a reporter at the El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post in 1976, and in 1979 joined the Dallas Times Herald, where he worked as a reporter and editor. At the Times Herald, he managed a yearlong project in 1987 covering the immigration amnesty program, which won numerous state and national prizes, including the SDX-SPJ’s National Gold Medal for Public Service.
Ernest joined New York Newsday in 1989 and was Brooklyn/Queens Editor, overseeing daily and enterprise coverage of the city's largest boroughs. He later served as Newsday’s Long Island regionals editor and deputy business editor. As an editor he was part of the editing teams that oversaw coverage on major stories such as both attacks on the World Trade Center, the explosion of TWA Flight 800, investigations of the Port Authority and the online coverage of the Iraq War. Prior to joining Columbia he was Long Island editor for Newsday.com, overseeing local coverage on the newspaper’s web site.
He served for two years as president of UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., and presided over its third national convention in August 2004 in Washington, the largest journalism convention ever held. In 1986, he was co-director of the Summer Program for Minority Journalists at UC Berkeley for the Institute for Journalism Education (now the Maynard Institute).
In June 2011, he was inducted into the National Association of Hispanic Journalists' Hall of Fame for his efforts to assist the organization make journalism more racially and ethnically diverse, from staffing to coverage.
He graduated from the University of Arizona with a bachelor's degree in journalism.
Julie Hartenstein, Associate Director, Career Services
Room 2M07C, 212-854-9198
jh548(at)columbia.edu
Julie Hartenstein has served as associate director since September 2005, specializing in broadcasting issues. She spent her career in television news at ABC Network News. She was hired as a researcher on the original staff of ABC News Nightline when it emerged as a nightly program from the American Held Hostage updates in 1980.
For most of her 10 years on the broadcast, she worked as an editorial producer and field producer, covering a wide range of national and international stories.
Her next assignment was as a producer of American Agenda segments on ABC News World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. She also worked as an assignment editor, produced for Good Morning America, 20/20, helped develop correspondent talent for ABC News and has served as a freelance program consultant on various projects.
For five years prior to joining Career Services, Julie was a member of the broadcast faculty at the Journalism School, where she taught RW1, TV News Magazine and Columbia News Tonight workshops.
In 1985 she was awarded the Benton Fellow in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago, and spent 7 months studying clinical medical ethics.
Gina Boubion, Assistant Director, Career Services
Room 2M07B, 212-854-2980
gboubion(at)columbia.edu
Gina Boubion advises students on magazine careers. Her first journalism job was a college internship at The Claremont Courier, a biweekly newspaper in Claremont, Calif. From 1987 to 1997, she was a reporter and editor specializing in poverty, juvenile justice and crime for the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, the Philadelphia Daily News, and the San Jose Mercury News. Her time in San Jose included a stint at the paper's Mexico City bureau. From 1998-2006 she taught journalism courses at NYU.
She joined Columbia in Sept. 2006. Her freelance journalism has appeared in Latina, Brides, and others. She holds a B.A. from Pomona College, an M.S. from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, and in 2011 earned an M.F.A. from Bennington College. Her essays and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, Reed magazine (2012 Steinbeck Short Story Award finalist), The Common Online, and 580 Split.
Elena Cabral, Adjunct Assistant Professor; Administrator of Part-time Program
Room 207B, 212-854-1124
mec9@columbia.edu
Jacqueline DeLaFuente, Program Administrator, Career Services
Room 2M07D, 212-854-4422
jmd2221(at)columbia.edu
Jacqueline DeLaFuente joined the Career Services staff in June 2011 and focuses on updating the career services website, managing JobNews, the internship and job database, and creating numerous other skills-building features and guides. She provides outreach to employers, as well as administrative support to the Assistant Dean, Associate Director and Assistant Director in all functions of the Office of Career Services, including conferences, seminars and the annual career expo.
Jacqueline holds a B.A. in psychology and Spanish from Amherst College. She also has an M.S. in Ed. from the University Of Pennsylvania Graduate School Of Education, and she was a 2009 Philadelphia Teach for America corps member. Before joining Career Services, she taught kindergarten and fifth grade in the School District of Philadelphia.