In my Reputation Era — How Taylor Swift Introduced me to PR

By: Ava Epstein

If anyone could find a way to connect Taylor Swift and public relations, it would be me.

As a PR major at the University of Florida, I am often asked why I chose my specific major. I always knew I wanted to go into journalism or communications in some form, but it wasn’t until I got the chance to meet Swift in early 2019 that I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

In middle school, people often saw me wearing huge pink headphones, seemingly unaware of anything happening around me. Every single day, the music beating through those headphones was Taylor Swift’s. I have made some of my closest friendships because of her, and her music has been a constant in the most formative years of my life.

When I found out my family and I were flying out to Los Angeles to visit my older brother in March 2019, I knew I had to snag tickets to the iHeart Radio Awards. I got tickets the night before and woke up on March 14, 2019, anxious but still excited to start the day.

While I thought that meeting Swift would be the highlight of the night, it was someone else who changed the trajectory of my life. Her name is Tree Paine.

After meeting Swift, I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Paine. Throughout the night, I watched as she darted across the arena as the publicist for Swift. This introduced me to an entirely new industry that I had not previously known.

Tree Paine has been working as Swift's publicist since 2014. Before taking on that job, she worked at Interscope Records starting in 1994 with clients like Snoop Dog and No Doubt. After this, she held leadership positions in both the Academy of Country Music and Warner Music Nashville. For both of these companies, she led and oversaw their marketing and PR.

Today, you can always find Paine trailing after or ahead of Swift at every event they attend. Paine has helped guide Swift through the pitfalls and highs of her enormous spotlight for many years and even helped get her through one of the biggest PR nightmares in Hollywood — the Kanye versus Swift debacle of 2016. She also led Swift through the stealing of her masters and her sexual assault trial.

After years of research and interest, I knew that when I got into the University of Florida, I would be declaring my major as PR. Now that I have spent the past few months learning more about this major being a part of Alpha PR, I have to say I definitely made the right decision, and I am thankful to Taylor Swift and Tree Paine for being my inspirations.