Lindsay Patterson ’06

Lindsay Patterson ‘06 tells good stories.

In 2011, after years of experience writing and editing, the former creative writing major took her love of learning about people and the stories that make them unique and decided to make a career of it. The path between her time at CC and her decision to launch the business Reflect & Record seems to have formed organically.

At CC, Lindsay immersed herself in the college’s writing community. Serving as the prose editor of The Leviathan and as an editor for The Cipher, she was deeply involved in on-campus publications. She credits her work at The Cipher with setting the course of her life after college. Working for The Cipher, she says, convinced her to transition from writing fiction to “finding stories from real life, which are better than anything I could make up.”

Lindsay also had an internship with KRCC during her time at school, which was an opportunity that helped launch her into the world of radio broadcasting. Shortly after graduation, Lindsay began doing freelance work for KRCC, reporting the story of working with people with special needs. “That’s
when I really fell in love with radio,” she says.

Lindsay went on to write scripts for EarthSky, a science radio program based in Austin, Texas, and was eventually offered the position of assistant producer.

After relocating to Austin, she worked at EarthSky for four years and was responsible for interviewing, writing, and occasionally hosting the radio show.

“My favorite part of being a reporter,” she says, “was talking to people about their lives, and figuring out what makes them who they are.” With this passion in mind, Lindsay left EarthSky to pursue her freelance career, and started the business Reflect & Record to record and preserve family stories before they are lost.

Reflect & Record uses documentary-style video and multimedia to tell stories about people, families,
and businesses. “I’ve had so many memorable clients,” Lindsay says. She has interviewed a range of people from war veterans to a woman who desegregated her high school and later went on to fight Apartheid.

“I’ve learned so much about how people live their lives— and it sounds cliche, but I try to apply those lessons to my own life.”

Lindsay’s most memorable project was recording the story of a woman who is suffering from a rare terminal illness. Lindsay was contacted by the woman’s family and friends who, knowing that she would not live to know her grandchildren, wanted to create a memoir that could be shown to future generations. Lindsay spent two days in Louisiana with the family to record their story. “I got such a sense of the love that they had together, and the way that they were dealing with the eventuality of losing her.”

“This is truly my passion in life,” she says, “and it’s  incredibly meaningful work.”

Outside of work, Lindsay is active within Austin’s journalism community, and has co-founded the Austin Listening Lounge, which is a local group for radio producers to share their work.