Who

Cristina Rayas / Production Coordinator & Assistant to Jessica Stuart

Cristina is a recent addition to the Long Story Short team starting as Jessica’s assistant and a production coordinator.

She is a graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She also minored in Urban and Metropolitan studies. Go Sun Devils!

After spending the summer of 2011 finishing her master’s degree as a reporter for Cronkite News Service in the Washington, D.C. bureau, Cristina fell in love with the capital. In the most daring move of her life, she called home and told her parents she was not going to be moving back to Denver as planned. She instead relocated her career without housing, without a job, and with less than sufficient funds in her quickly shrinking bank account. Armed with a degree and a passion for storytelling, Cristina jumped into the job-search battlefield. This is when, as luck would have it, Jessica Stuart found her.

Things have since fallen together beautifully since she has joined the team at Long Story Short and she looks forward to helping Jessica and the team gear up for the many exciting, upcoming projects ahead of them.

Cristina got the opportunity to travel to the Dominican Republic in the spring of 2011 with the Cronkite School exploring current immigration issues on the island of Hispaniola. Cristina did her best reporting in those ten days in the Dominican Republic and discovered the delicious combination of camarofongo and a cold Presidente.  Back in Arizona, Cristina co-produced a 30-minute documentary based on the project. She hopes this international storytelling experience is just the first of many to come.

While working toward her degree, Cristina was selected for a competitive Emma Bowen Foundation internship, working full-time for KCNC-TV for three years during her winter and summer vacations, getting just enough ‘snow time’ in Denver each winter to return happily to the desert heat of Phoenix.

She also worked for Chatter Media, in Scottsdale, Ariz. helping design social media strategy and creating original content for a variety of clients.

Cristina is fluent in English and YouTube. She also makes a terrific translator for any dialect of squealings that might be caused by watching videos of baby animals.

When Cristina is not gleefully serving the every beck and call of the incomparable Jessica Stuart, she can be found exploring her new neighborhood and tries (usually unsuccessfully) to hide her tourist-like excitement for discovering the gems of the city.