Andre Blackman: Rocking at the Intersection of Tech and Public Health

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• November 11, 2011
• By Jaclyn Schiff
• 7 Comments

So there’s this awesome job, the sort of job you’d just die to land (and tell your friends about)! But the awesome job isn’t nearly like the job you have now. So how do you make it from current job to awesome job?

In our podcast series, we’re hoping to provide insights and answers to that very question. We talk to young people who have amazing jobs or are doing something really cool and interesting and ask them how they did it. So listen along for good information and some inspiration, too.

Blogging, networking, social media, health. It’s all in day’s work for Andre Blackman, the director of digital communications/new media for the American Heart Association’s mid-Atlantic affiliate.

Though Andre was on the engineering track when he started college, he soon discovered his interest in public health and started using the problem-solving skills he learned as an engineer to think of innovative solutions for health problems. He launched his blog, Pulse + Signal as a way to further explore the intersection of public health, innovation and technology.

“Blogging has opened up numerous doors for me and has really played an integral role in my own personal development,” Andre said in our interview. And how’s this for cool? Some of the opportunities he’s landed through blogging and other social media connections include serving on the advisory boards for the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media, and SXSW Health.

Recently, Andre also helped organize the first Fast Forward Health film festival to highlight innovative public health stories from around the world. I checked out the event a few weeks ago in D.C. and it absolutely rocked! Unique, fun and edgy. It was even written up on NPR’s Shots blog. NPR wrote:

Organizers and speakers described the film festival as a fun way to approach a serious subject, and a great counterpoint to the American Public Health Association’s annual meeting also taking place in DC this week. They dubbed their event “the un-conference.”

In the interview, we discussed how Andre and his co-organizers came up with the idea for the film festival. And bloggers, listen up! You’ll want to hear the part about how Andre is using a unique niche job board to monetize his blog.

Andre Blackman

So listen now, and be sure to connect with Andre in the comments here or on Twitter.