Broadcast journalism graduate and YouTuber Eva Gutowski, also known as MyLifeAsEva, visited Harvard-Westlake (HW) students Monday. She spoke about her experiences with broadcast journalism and how Oprah and her experience in journalism inspired her to be a YouTuber.

Gutowski started her YouTube channel in her first of college after realizing that she wanted a career in which she could use her journalism knowledge but also enjoy herself.

“In my first year of college, I realized I was killing it in my classes,” Gutowski said. “In senior year I was literally teaching them.”

After starting her YouTube channel, her fan-base has grown to approximately 9.5 million YouTube subscribers and 5.9 million Instagram followers as of publication date.

“We brought Eva Gutowski in to talk about the changing media landscape and how to use journalism degrees in various ways to effect change,” journalism adviser and English teacher Juliet Suess said.

Gutowski spoke about building a personal brand and remaining authentic, even as in trying to give fans what they want. She said that her videos are meant to be enjoyable for others to watch and follow what is popular right now, but that she also adds her own twist on all of her YouTube videos.

“I thought that she was really cool, and I learned a lot about the internet and what you can and cannot do on the internet [and] how to make yourself big on the internet,” Colin Assil ‘22 said.