By Chase Urbach University of Nebraska-Lincoln Seven years ago when Kelly Mosier, 35, started working for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln athletic department running high-profile social media accounts he was working up to where is now. “When a full-time job with Husker Vision opened up after graduation, I applied and got the job. I have continued growing my skill set and career ever since,” said Mosier, a UNL graduate. Mosier was the assistant athletic director for creative and emerging media at the athletic department for seven years. This month, he took a similar position at Hudl. At Husker athletics, Mosier, who is from Davenport, Nebraska, ran the two highest-profile social media accounts. Mosier worked on accounts for sports including football, basketball, baseball and volleyball. Mosier uses social media different for personal use and professional use. Personally, Mosier enjoys sharing memories with friends and family. Professionally, he likes to maintain a persona as a fun, knowledgeable social media expert with Nebraska interests in mind. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln athletic department's overall goal with social media is to give fans an inside look on what it is like being a student athlete. There was no such thing as an average day for Mosier. He ran social media accounts and stayed current to social media trends while providing oversight and leadership for long-term planning. Social media wasn’t always as advanced as it is today. In 2011, when Kelly started working for the Huskers, social media was in its early stages. "We realized there was great potential to give fans great access. It transitioned very quickly from being an omniscient voice in the sky to an insider look,” he said. Since social media evolved rapidly over the years Mosier worked for the athletic department, he was always learning new ways to strategically use different platforms. “The most difficult part was just managing both the need for long-term strategic thinking with the daily operations of the social accounts. That required having your brain in both spaces at the same time,” Mosier said. Since Mosier took the job in 2011, the athletic department went through some good and bad times including coaches being fired and hired, championships being won and the death of a student athlete. As the size of the athletic department grew, his role changed to being more focused on recruiting; others took over the role of running the accounts. “As for the most difficult day, that was easily the day that Sam Foltz’s death was announced,” Mosier said. On July 23, 2016, Foltz died in a car accident returning home from a kicking camp in Wisconsin. Foltz was a talented punter for the Husker football team and beloved student athlete. “It was difficult for a lot of reasons, mostly because we didn’t know the appropriate way to react, and we all had a large amount of our own internal emotions going on with it,” Mosier said. Good times that Mosier remembers includes Jack Hoffman’s touchdown run. Hoffman is a 12-year-old boy from Atkinson, Nebraska, who has pediatric brain cancer. In 2013 during the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s spring game, he ran for a 69-yard touchdown and was met in the end zone by the entire Husker football team. He has fond memories of every game day, of then-coach Bo Pelini walking out of the tunnel at Memorial Stadium with a cat and of going to a Chance the Rapper concert with then-Coach Mike Riley. But Mosier always kept an eye on a specific company called Hudl. He has always been looking for the next step in his career and something that gets him out of managing daily content and more into strategy. He said Hudl was a good fit. Hudl is a software company that gives coaches and athletes online access to film to prepare and stay ahead of their competition. Hudl has over 160,000 teams and 4.2 million users around the world. Hudl has over 700 employees in 15 countries. Mosier's started with Hudl in April 2018 as its head programming for the media department. David Graff, the CEO of Hudl and a UNL graduate, worked with Mosier in the athletic department at UNL. He kept an eye on Hudl because of his relationship with Graff. Kelly graduated from UNL in 2006 and then became a graduate assistant at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. He started as an intern in Husker Vision, which is a Nebraska athletics media outlet that provides video coverage of all sports. As an undergraduate, Mosier made his own documentary called “In the Wake of Catastrophe.” “That was life changing, and I don’t mean to take that phrase lightly,” Mosier said. The documentary was an in-depth reporting project. A group traveled to Sri Lanka to examine the recovery after the 2006 Indonesian tsunami. They spent nearly a week there gathering information about relief efforts and how people’s lives have been changed. This group also went to New Orleans to draw comparison between the two tragedies. “It was a very intense, but rewarding project,” he said. For those looking to pursue a career in communications or journalism, Mosier has some advice. “Get as much experience as you can. Find people to learn from and soak as much up from them as possible," he said. "Experience, relationships and networking matter a lot in this industry, so make sure you make as many as you can.”
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