Hello everyone. My name is Nicole Jennings and I am so excited to join the staff of the Issaquah-Sammamish Reporter in my first full-time journalism position.

I was born and raised in Mount Vernon, the third generation in a Skagit Valley family, and was the second in my clan to serve as editor-in-chief of the Mount Vernon High School Bulldog (the first being my mom in the 1970s). I graduated magna cum laude from Western Washington University in June 2015 with a major in history and two minors in German and French.

I just returned last week from Salzburg, Austria — the Alpine city home to Mozart and the “Sound of Music” — where I spent the past school year as an English teaching assistant in two high schools through the Fulbright program. It was an incredible eight-month period that allowed me to travel to seven different countries, learn about new cultures, improve my German and make lifelong friends. For me, the most important aspect of a job is that I can keep learning new things, and this position definitely allowed me to do that.

My grandmother, a postwar bride, is originally from the Bavarian city of Bamberg, and I have grown up visiting her family members there every summer. Through these trips, I was fortunate enough to travel around Europe with my mom a bit, and subsequently developed a passion for European history, art, architecture, music and languages. When I discovered Salzburg on my travels, I immediately fell in love with the Baroque city nestled in between mountains. After a semester spent studying there in autumn 2013, I knew I needed to go back, so I looked into applying for a Fulbright grant.

Now back in the U.S., it’s time to focus on the career I always knew I wanted — journalism. For the past five years — since the day after I graduated high school — I have worked as a reporter for the La Conner Weekly News in La Conner. Though it’s a small-town paper and very different from the bustling new office I am in now, I learned so much about the ins and outs of journalism during my time there, and I had the opportunity to dig into some complex local political issues. I will forever be grateful for my time at the eight-page weekly that gave me my start.

When I’m not writing or traveling, I love devouring novels, running (I just did my first half-marathon in Salzburg), and singing and acting in community theatre. It’s pretty exciting for this Skagit County girl to be working (and hopefully soon living) in Issaquah. I am so looking forward to my time here at the Reporter.