Up Close: A Storyteller for Social Change

“Archetypes” producer Kayla Lattimore ’12 follows her curiosity – from a state prison to the life of royalty.

Attending Furman helped Kayla Lattimore ’12 realize that she wanted to pursue a career telling stories through documentaries. 

“Being at Furman, I had the opportunity to meet and make friends with people from different walks of life,” says the Atlanta native, “and that made me want to go out and see the world more and do more.” 

So, Lattimore began producing documentary films and subsequently stories for radio, as well.  Her latest gig is as a producer on the Spotify podcast, “Archetypes.”  

The show is hosted by Meghan Markle, a former actor known more recently as the Duchess of Sussex and the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry. It looks at the stereotypes and labels that affect women. In conversations with experts and celebrities, Markle picks apart the origins of these tropes and how women overcome them. In the first episode of the series, Markle speaks to tennis icon Serena Williams about how ambition is often vilified in women and how she had to learn to embrace her own ambitious nature.  

Lattimore was working as an associate producer on the NPR show “Fresh Air” when she was approached about working on “Archetypes.”  

“My job is to help come up with episode concepts, guest ideas, and once we have the interview taped, go through and cut it, arrange it in an interesting way, and work with the editor on crafting that,” she says. “It’s really fun.”  

Lattimore majored in communication studies and Spanish with a concentration in Latin American studies. In her classes with Associate Professor of Communication Studies Janet Kwami, she learned the history of a changing media landscape, among other things.  

“It was where I was first able to tell my own stories,” says Lattimore.  

In Communication Studies Professor Cynthia King’s African American rhetoric class, Lattimore learned how Black orators use their rhetoric to push for social change. Studying away in Chile and interning with The Shine Group, a television production company, also shaped her pathway.  

Later, Lattimore spent a year serving with AmeriCorps in Oakland, California, where she worked with Volunteers of America Northern California working to help individuals in the organization’s recidivism program in San Quentin Prison. She helped initiate a film program for the men in San Quentin, so they would be able to shoot, edit and produce their own documentary films.  

Lattimore earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from American University and discovered an affinity for audio, leading her to the Transom Story Workshop in Massachusetts, where she learned to produce for radio. In her spare time, she does creative writing, lifts weights, runs and spends time with her cat, Jackie Daytona, in her Philadelphia home.