Bio
Julie Riggott has been immersed in communications and marketing as a freelance writer and editor since 2009, when she started working for the University of Southern California. Her regular clients at USC include the Marshall School of Business, Leventhal School of Accounting, Gould School of Law and Thornton School of Music. She has written a variety of materials, including articles, newsletters, brochures, press releases, donor proposals and one sheets. She has also written for the Roski School of Art and Design, Glorya Kaufman School of Dance and Institute of Armenian Studies, and worked on projects for the Clinical Research Organization. Her articles have been published in the USC Trojan Family Magazine, USC Law Magazine, Clinical Perspectives Newsletter, USC News, USC Chronicle and KUSC Newsletter.
​
Julie also works as a writer and editor for Claremont McKenna College. Projects include collaborating with the Public Affairs and Communications team on three new websites: a 75th anniversary website; a CMC Returns website keeping students, faculty and staff up to date in the wake of the pandemic; and a website dedicated to the Presidential Initiative on Anti-Racism and the Black Experience in America.
​
Other clients have included Scripps College, UCLA Anderson School of Management, the Nixon Foundation and Metromix Los Angeles (a Tribune Company website). For a number of years, Julie worked for the Norton Simon Museum, editing projects for the public affairs director and a curator. Julie has written and edited copy for a neuropsychologist, autism agencies and a tech startup. She has experience proofreading textbooks, articles for scholarly journals, nonfiction books and novels. She has also written articles for magazines such as Singular, Verdugo Monthly, LA Stage Times and Luxury Life & Style, and freelanced as an editorial assistant for SKEPTIC magazine.
​
Before becoming a freelance writer and editor, Julie enjoyed a career in print journalism. She was editor of a magazine devoted to the arts and culture, personalities and charitable organizations in the Pasadena area, Arroyo Monthly, and the arts section of two weekly newspapers in Southern California, Pasadena Weekly (2005-2007) and Los Angeles Downtown News (2007-2008), where her work earned professional awards and community recognition. Her favorite interviews for Arroyo and PW include poet Billy Collins, Cosmos producer Ann Druyan, writer Sandra Tsing Loh and Caltech scientists -- and booking an interview and photo shoot with Beach Boy Brian Wilson. For DT News, highlights include interviewing press-shy novelist Larry McMurty, actors Tim Robbins and John Malkovich, and artist Robert Graham (her story on Graham won Honorable Mention for Writing from the California Newspaper Publishers Association).
​
A native New Englander and devoted Southern Californian since 1998, Julie earned her BA in English with minors in psychology and business from Western New England University and completed coursework for an MA in English at the University of Connecticut. She has also taken courses in the UCLA Writer’s Program.