Title:Hoya Highlight: Tyrone Turner (C’86, G’89)

“You don’t have to travel around the world to find incredible stories.” – Tyrone Turner

According to Tyrone Turner, the best things in life happen organically, and as a result, there is no one linear career path. Turner graduated from Georgetown in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a minor in Psychology, originally striving to become a psychologist.

As a student, Turner was a diver on the swimming and diving team which kept him busy. After graduating, Turner’s passion for photography grew rapidly when he worked as a photography apprentice for the well-known architectural photographer, Balthazar Korab. Though he learned much from Korab, Turner soon realized architectural photography was not his passion, motivating him to switch to a more human-centered career path.

Turner graduated as a double Hoya in 1989 with a master’s degree in Comparative Politics with a focus on Latin American Studies. During the program, Turner accepted a paid internship with CIPRA where he traveled to Mexico to work in development and photograph the culture that he encountered. It was one of his most “life changing experiences.”

From there, he stayed in the DC region working for a small newspaper in Reston, Va., where he learned more about photojournalism and subsequently met his wife, Susan Sterner. Eventually, Turner found his way to New Orleans, where he spent six years working at a “medium-sized” newspaper, The Times-Picayune, traveling on assignment to Africa, Indonesia, Mexico, and Cuba to document youth violence, gangs, and guns. These experiences were crucial in solidifying his passion for photojournalism, but he still wanted to do more. Turner and Sterner applied for fellowships at the Institute of Current World Affairs to pursue Latin American Studies, and both were accepted into the program. During this fellowship, Turner focused on youth issues in Brazil, exploring addiction, religion, and child labor.

After two years of eye-opening work in Brazil, Turner and Sterner returned to the United States, settling in Northern Virginia. Turner re-connected with a former photo editor and started working for National Geographic Magazine as a contract photographer, reporting on various issues including the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill.

Currently, Turner is a visuals editor/photojournalist at WAMU, Washington’s NPR station, and is a contributor to NPR, incorporating sound into his multimedia projects. For Turner, the underlying drive behind his work has been social justice. Through his work, Turner discovered his passion— collaborating with and documenting the strength of “people who are making their lives better” through community work and healing—which encompasses the richness of photojournalism.

Turner’s first piece of advice for current students and alumni is “don’t panic, things are never as bad as they seem, but also never as good.” This piece of advice came from his father, who would tell him to calm down and focus on what’s in front of him instead of comparing himself to others or forcing a specific future. For Turner, focusing inward allowed him to discover his goal—to be of service to others—which paved the way for a fulfilling and rich career journey (though not without barriers and plateaus).

Turner advises everyone to find a career path they love and become a student of others who have taken that path because observing and listening is the best method of learning. If it involves a passion, the exorbitant amount of work one must do in their career will be more worthwhile and fulfilling. It’s impossible to copy someone’s life path, but by talking to others in similar fields, one can discover more about how to pursue their own passion.