Athima Chansanchai, Journalist and Do-Good Entrepreneur

I was off the grid until I arrived on the social media scene just over six months ago, and Athima Chansanchai is one of my first cyber friends. I first noticed Athima when she joined the Strange Tango fan/friend page on Facebook, leaving thoughtful comments on my posts. I was impressed that she had taken the initiative to visit our innovative personal website and to look for Strange Tango on Facebook. As I vetted her profile on the internet, I saw we had several friends in common, including Sangita Chandra, a longtime friend and StrangeTango.com adviser who was the co-chair of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) 2009 convention in Boston during which our website launched. Sangita is also an Emmy Award-winning arts and culture television producer/reporter at WCVB in Boston, the flagship Hearst-Argyle station. I later learned that Athima and Sangita had roomed together some years ago at a national convention of UNITY: Journalists of Color. 

I friended Athima on my Facebook personal account, and we became a part of each other’s expansive social network. As I read her posts and updates about her life that streamed through my Facebook news feed, I was taken by the honesty and authenticity conveyed. Many Facebook users cultivate a branded persona on social media, so this raw and unfiltered individual was very credible to me. A multidimensional person was emerging: her life and aspirations shared on a continual basis with close to 1,000 Facebook friends, of which we had 82 friends in common. If she were intriguing to me—a literary stylist/conceptual artist with a finely-tuned sensibility who casts her net far and wide to curate some of the best content on the world wide web—it stood to reason that Athima would have an interesting personal history to share with the world. Indeed, she does.

Athima Chansanchai is the Founder/President of Tima Media, which is derived from a catchy and memorable nickname bestowed by a high school friend. She launched her brand after more than a decade as a seasoned, prize-winning print and online journalist. Her professional reinvention is, she says, “the first time in my life that I could be my own boss.”

The twin themes of exploration and openness to new experiences characterize much of Athima’s early life and career trajectory.

Until she was two and a half years of age, Athima lived with her paternal grandmother in Thailand, and she had resided in four states and two countries by the time she reached the 6^th grade. Both parents were doctors who came to American to further their careers. Her father, she says, was restless and moved his family around the eastern seaboard region until they settled in Florida.

“Looking back, one of the best things about Florida was that it gave me perspective,” she recalls. Her father loved to take his family on road trips. He was a doctor who had the financial resources, but he was frugal as well. From these early experiences, Athima developed self-sufficiency, learned to adapt to her environment, and how to find a common denominator with different kids of people. She credits travel with expanding her perspective on people around the country, “I can relate to anyone about anything.”

At Oberlin College, Athima majored in history. She gained work experience in Washington, D.C., with a non-profit in the area of immigration before considering graduate studies in the fields of law, Asian Studies, and journalism. She was offered admission to graduate programs and professional schools in these diverse disciplines and ultimately decided on Stanford University’s graduate program in journalism. “I always had strength and comfort as a writer,” she explains. 

After earning her master’s degree in journalism in 1996, Athima began her professional career at the Village Voice, the groundbreaking alternative weekly, where she was the Chief of Research. She entered the mainstream media milieu in 2000 as a reporter/editor at the Baltimore Sun covering municipal government, crime, politics, children’s literature, and arts & entertainment.

While the Baltimore Sun offered the kind of training and credibility associated with the traditional route to advancement in print journalism, Athima’s decision to relocate to the West Coast allowed her to develop her talents further. She joined the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2005 and worked on the metro desk before moving to the arts & entertainment beat. Her productivity extended across a broad spectrum of content and focused on pop culture and urban trends, local talent, and events, as well as sub-cultures in the Pacific Northwest. Insightful and empathetic stories—about garment workers, roller derby girls, and hip-hop culture—was her imprint. Athima also became a freelance columnist for MSNBC.com as “DigiGirl” writing about consumer electronics.

She fondly recalls her experience at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a wonderful environment that made her a better writer and helped her to “find my voice and fully express it.” Her strong writing skills gave her the ability to adapt her writing style to inject humor, cleverness, pathos, and edginess in her articles. “I try not to be judgmental,” she observes. She believes everyone deserves a chance for his or her voice to be heard.

This is a challenging era for journalism. In 2009, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closed its doors after more than a century as a print operation. The newspaper now exists in online form. Her colleagues were laid off, and Athima was also personally affected. She quickly rebounded, deciding it was not helpful to dwell on circumstances, and she turned her prodigious energy and direction to crafting her own brand. An Online News Association conference she attended was especially helpful. There, an idea came to mind. She would become her own publisher, for in the world of new media, barriers to entry were being torn down, and writers could convey their messages in ways never before possible in traditional media organizations.

The unexpected loss of one’s vocation and livelihood is traumatic, but more so in Athima’s situation. She learned of the paper’s decision to close just one month after her mother had passed away and was laid to rest with Buddhist ceremonial rites. Coincidentally, the day she received word that she and her colleagues were being laid off was also her first day in therapy to address her residual grief over the absence of her mother in her life. Given the instability and uncertainty she faced, Athima nonetheless felt an overwhelming sense of relief, “Now we know. It’s not like speculation,” she remembers.

But the demise of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was also the birth of Tima Media. Athima now had the time and the space she needed to cope with her personal loss. Instead of going into overdrive, being hyperkinetic and prolific, she pulled back and spent time  with family and friends, people who are important to her.

Many journalists have lost their jobs in the shifting media landscape, and the loss to the public and the industry is incalculable in terms of quality and credibility in professional newsgathering, reporting, and analysis. The advice Athima would give someone who is undergoing the same experience would be to take a breath, to step back, and to not make hasty decisions.

“If you can, re-evaluate where you are in your life.” Aside from the practical matters requiring attention, such as insurance and unemployment, she says this transition is an opportune time to determine if you would be happier moving in another direction and to  prepare for the changes entailed. Go to school, find a job in another field, take a trip.

Athima’s Facebook friends followed her personal journey as she posted resources from conferences and presentations, jetted off to New York City and the San Francisco area, and shared photographs of family and friends she was visiting. She misses the camaraderie of the workplace but continues to work with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on a freelance basis.

A Seattle representative to the AAJA National Board of Directors since 2006, Athima is grateful for the show of support she has received from her fellow journalists. With as much as 30% of working journalists having already lost or in danger of losing their jobs, she cautions, “This is the new landscape AAJA has to address—the traditional definition of what a journalist is.” She feels her hard-won insights would be especially relevant as a member of the AAJA Governing Board and hopes to campaign for a seat on the board.

New media has given Athima an outlet for expressing all her skills and interests as a communications specialist, writer/editor, freelance consultant, content creator, and entrepreneur. The professional services offered by Tima Media include writing press releases, creating marketing campaigns, editing books, and writing freelance articles. Her sisters are also on board using their professional skills to advise Athima on the business and legal aspects of her enterprise.   

I ask her about her next chapter in life, what she would like her brand to represent. Characteristically, she replies, “What drives me is this sense of purpose.” She wants Tima Media to be more than an umbrella operation—to have a compelling mission and vision.

Later in February, Athima is adding a blog on Timamedia.com leading into the official launch in May or June of her newest project—thegirlsniteout.com—her main enterprise in 2010. She is currently working with a web designer and a web developer on the one-stop, dedicated site for women in Seattle to navigate the city’s nightlife in a safe and enjoyable way.

“Women are planners,” she explains. She would offer “essential and credible information and advice,” along with vetted resources, experience, reviews, and videos to help women make informed decisions. For thegirlsniteout.com, she is exploring a revenue model that includes advertising and other revenue streams to monetize the site, along with a future retail portal component. In particular, Athima hopes to tap resources that fund women entrepreneurs. Her ethos is driven by an ideal of women-led businesses, transparent and open.  

Her future plans for Tima Media are likewise expansive. Starting locally in Seattle, Athima’s goal is to build a women-centric community that could be a model for other cities across the country. In tailoring the site to women, a part of her mission is to forge ties with non-profits, women’s groups, and immigrants. She would like to offer opportunities for herself and other women to serve on advisory boards, to design panels and sessions of interest to her audience, and to perform pro bono work.

Although she does not allude to her mother’s influence, it is apparent to me that Athima Chansanchai’s brand of do-good entrepreneurism is a tribute to her love for and the influence of her mother. There is a tradition of strong mothers and daughters in her family that infuses her urgent sense of public service. Her passion is to inspire, engage, and empower women: to help other women to find their own voice.

In words and actions, Athima’s life history is summarized in one sentence: “I want to do good.”