9 minute read
SOARING with HEART
SHSU Alumni Shine at Southwest Airlines
BY JULIA MAY
Two Department of Mass Communication graduates are enjoying successful careers in the airline industry as communicators for Southwest Airlines while using skills they developed almost 20 years ago at Sam Houston State University.
Dan Landson, BFA in radio and television, 2006, is a public relations advisor for the airline and Erin Barnard McCann, BFA in radio and television, 2006, is an internal communication consultant.
Dan Landson
As a public relations advisor at Southwest, Landson works with several internal business units across the company, while also supporting public relations and media relations efforts in Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, among others.
“On any given day, we are working with colleagues to generate story ideas to pitch to journalists — everything from new routes to new products and services,” he said. “We are also building relationships with reporters, working with our social team to create content to drive engagement and revenue, and helping executives prepare for an interview, speech, presentation, or even overseeing
their social channel platforms. Our work is extremely diverse, and no two days are ever the same.”
Landson chose SHSU primarily because freshmen were given the opportunity to get involved with their major classes on day one.
It's an incredibly rewarding experience to share out employees' stories.
“The idea of going somewhere else and spending two years doing pre-reqs before being able to apply for your major wasn’t enticing to me,” he said. “Within a few days of starting at Sam, I knew I made the right decision. There’s no way I would be where I am today without the education I received at SHSU.”
Like many broadcast journalism students, Landson wanted to be a reporter.
“There is something about being in the field, the rush of breaking news, meeting new people every day, and sharing the stories of the community that really drew me into the role,” he said. “I never changed my major and always enjoyed where I was headed. While I was focused on broadcast journalism, I kept learning about other opportunities including in sports broadcasting, but always found myself back in a reporting track.”
Following graduation, Landson applied to nearly 100 TV stations across the country which resulted in only two interviews — and no jobs.
“Instead of being down about it, I changed my approach and started applying for other entry level roles just to get experience,” he said.
Within a few weeks he was offered a job in news as an associate producer and editor at KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. He remained at the TV station for seven years, holding a variety of producing positions before leaving the news industry for a public relations opportunity at Southwest Airlines in 2013.
Landson says it is especially rewarding for him personally to tell positive stories about the airline’s employees, customers and the ways Southwest provides community support in the cities the airline serves.
“While we’re always listening to what our employees and customers are talking about and sharing, we’re also keeping an eye out for those ‘special moments’ that happen in airports and on our planes,” he said. “We often reach out to those customers and employees and share their stories on a Southwest social media channel; sometimes these stories end up being featured by news outlets around the world.”
Some of the more fun moments he’s worked on included organizing an inflight wedding between Nashville, Tenn. and Dallas which Huffington Post ranked as the “6th Craziest Wedding Headline of 2014.” He also surprised a couple with an in-airport wedding shower after the soonto-be husband posted a message about a kind gesture from one of the airline’s customer service agents; and even threw a fashion show in the sky between New York and Chicago to highlight a new partnership.
The airline often shares other heartfelt stories about its employees. In 2018, Landson worked with one of the airline’s captains who had the opportunity to fly hishis father’s remains back to Dallas, 52 years after the father was killed in action during the Vietnam War. As it turns out, Love Field — the airline’s home airport — is where the captain dropped his dad off for deployment when he was five years old. Originally, the story was planned to be a video on YouTube and other content on the airline’s social channels. The media got wind of it, and the story became one of the most viral news moments of the year and one of the most successful stories the airline published on its Facebook account.
It’s an incredibly rewarding experience to share our employees’ stories,
Landson said. “While there’s a PR element of making something successful through placements or engagements, there’s a human element of being able to document the day and provide something for the family to hold on to forever.”
Sometimes, however, the news of the day is not always uplifting.
“At Southwest Airlines, we are a 24/7 industry that’s transporting more than 500,000 people daily. We have to be able to switch gears at a moment’s notice should a situation come up that takes over social and traditional media channels,” he said. “That just comes with the nature of our work.”
During a crisis, the Southwest Communication Team is on the front lines of working with the company’s leaders to craft statements and disseminating information to employees, media, customers, and other stakeholders ensuring they are informed with the latest information.
“Time is of the essence, and just a little delay could mean the difference between controlling or losing the overall narrative,” he said.
Reflecting on his own experience as a mass communication major at SHSU, Landson advises current students to take every opportunity to learn.
“Be curious, ask questions,” he said, “and network, network, network.”
Erin McCann
Erin McCann manages all facets of communication for her internal client, Southwest Airlines’ Technical Operations Team — known outside the industry as maintenance and engineering — a work group of approximately 5,000 employees. She handles everything from developing executive voice, to supporting strategic projects and developing speaking points for events, to long-range strategic communications and daily communication needs.
Prior to joining Southwest in 2022, she spent 15 years working in K-12 education, primarily as a school communicator. She worked for four school districts and her final role was as the director of marketing and communications for Allen ISD, a large school district in North Texas.
“In school PR, I was a generalist, which means I handled a little bit of everything from social media to external media relations, crisis and internal communications,” she said. “At Southwest, I love that I am able to focus on internal communications and really support my clients with their needs. While at SHSU, I never really knew there was an entire sector of our career field that focused on internal communication. But after my years working in public education, I was able to identify that this was an area I really enjoyed and wanted to explore.”
The ability to focus on a specific audience has allowed McCann to work on interesting projects and events that affect her workgroup. In February 2024, alongside external partner Landson, McCann was part of a hangar facility expansion in Phoenix that saw local media, community partners, and tech ops team members come together to celebrate the new facility space, as well as a continued advancement into Southwest’s operation on the west coast.
Although McCann did not start her collegiate academic journey at SHSU, she became a Bearkat around her junior year when she transferred to SHSU.
“I found myself needing a program that had professors with whom I could build relationships,” she said. “With Dan Rather as our patron, SHSU had the great reputation of having a broadcast journalism program that was incredibly hands-on and having faculty that invested in their students. My time on campus was pivotal and I learned so much.”
Shortly before she graduated, her goals shifted toward a desire for more work/life balance than a career in broadcasting would provide. She never sent out a single audition tape and instead found herself looking for other roles in the realm of communication that leveraged her skill set.
“However, all of the skills I learned at SHSU have directly applied to the changes I made to work in PR and internal communication,” she said, “I am especially grateful for the variety of experiences I had in everything from production to screenwriting, to public relations.”
Since earning her degree at SHSU, McCann has participated in the Certified Public Communicator program at Texas Christian University, and she attained the Accreditation in Public Relations certification widely recognized as the highest level of accreditation for public relations professionals.
Even with my concentration in broadcast journalism, Sam taught me how to tell a great story
Almost 15 years after graduating from SHSU, she began to think about earning a terminal degree.
“A former boss suggested that to reach the top job in my career, I should really consider a master’s degree,” she said. “This was at the beginning of COVID. I was home much more than I ever had been before and began to consider that balancing another degree and a career may be possible.”
She enrolled at Sacred Heart University in the strategic communication program.
“I found that as an older, professional student, I really loved higher education,” McCann said. “I excelled and was invited to come back and teach in that same program after I graduated in 2022.”
Upon encouragement from some of her professors, she then began to think about getting a PhD. In fall 2022, she enrolled in the University of North Dakota, which offers a unique hyflex doctoral program, with a focus on interpersonal communication.
McCann encourages current SHSU undergraduates to get involved in as many things as they can to help formulate an enriched, well-rounded experience. Not only was she actively involved with the department’s radio and television programs, she was also a part of Greek Life as a member of Alpha Chi Omega. Like Landson, she believes in the importance of networking. In fact, her friendship and connection with Landson is what led her to Southwest Airlines, almost 20 years after they were at SHSU together.
“I saw the posting for my job and sent him a message asking about the position, the company, and the culture,” she said. “He told me he thought I’d be a great fit and personally walked my resume down to the hiring manager. I couldn’t be more thrilled with my role at Southwest and am thankful for the connection who helped me get my foot in the door.”
Be curious, ask questions, and network, network, network. -Dan Landson
