Meet Amy Forsythe

We recently connected with Amy Forsythe and have shared our conversation below.

Amy , looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
Being in the Marine Corps and surrounded by others who are dedicated to helping others and accomplishing the mission developed a sense of duty and purpose. When your job is to protect our national security and save lives, work ethic is just naturally increased especially when you know that the stakes are so high. Serving in the military is much more that working at a job because it gives you a greater sense of teamwork and higher purpose.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Amy Forsythe is an award-winning military journalist who served five combat tours supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom and has been on assignment for several other overseas missions in places like: Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, Guam, Poland, Romania, and Germany.  Amy started her career as a U.S. Marine combat correspondent in 1993 and currently serves as Public Affairs Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Her imagery taken while covering military operations around the world has been featured in numerous international and national media outlets through the years and continues to be used for historical purposes.

Amy recently published a book titled ‘Heroes Live Here’ which showcases the history of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and she was recently inducted to the Women’s Museum of California 2023 Hall of Fame for the Historian category.

Amy Forsythe is a highly sought-after speaker and her photos from the book, “Heroes Live Here: A Tribute to Camp Pendleton Marines Since 9/11” have been on display in numerous exhibits throughout the county to help share the courage of the U.S. Marines who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and inspire patriotism through sharing stories of heroism and sacrifices made by Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton through the years. Learn more at www.heroeslivehere.com.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three top qualities, skills and knowledge that were most helpful include:

Being curious: As a storyteller and communications officer, I have to take interest in others to better learn what will make a good story or how to extract the most interesting aspects of someone else’s journey. I’m also curiously looking for the unknown or undiscovered. I take a lot of pride in learning new things and figuring out a way to share it with others.

Skills I most cherish are ‘soft skills’ which are the combination of people skills, social skills, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and personality traits that make it easy to get along and work harmoniously with other people. Soft skills can be taught, but they’re not as straightforward as hard skills: those specific qualities and skills that can be clearly defined, measured, and taught for success in a job. Developing soft skills will also allow people to navigate complicated situations and have a pathway forward.

The knowledge that has carried me forward is learning how to operate cameras, computers and communication tools. Learning how to take and produce high-quality images and videos has afforded me a wonderful career and the chance to be invited to many great events and adventures.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I’m always looking for collaboration with other creative people who want to improve storytelling skills. I’m looking to create videos to accompany my book titled ‘Heroes Live Here: A Tribute to Camp Pendleton Marines Since 9/11’ and bring these stories to life. There are so many wonderful stories of heroism, selflessness and survival and it would be wonderful to partner with a multimedia team to help create these stories to share with a wider audience.

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