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Southwest selects Lynn Maples as new Strategic Communication Specialist

By Marketing and Communications Staff

Lynn MaplesLynn Maples is an award-winning journalist and marketing professional with more than 35 years of experience in the financial and healthcare industries. He joined Southwest Tennessee Community College as a Strategic Communication Specialist on Oct. 16, 2023. In this position, he will assist the department of Communications and Marketing in creating strategic messaging aligned with the strategic goals of the College. 

Maples began his career in 1986 as a teenager as a cub reporter for the Osceola Times and Citizens Journal newspapers in Mississippi County, Ark., and did a weekend gig as a radio host for an Oldies AM radio station. While attending Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, he interned at KAIT-8 (ABC Affiliate) and worked as a special assignment reporter for the Blytheville Courier News in which he covered the infamous West Memphis Three murder on his second day on assignment.

He became a staff reporter for the Courier News upon graduating A-State in 1994 and eventually a stringer for the Associated Press. During his tenure, he broke national news stories about sexual harassment at an international steel mill, covered a drug cartel’s crime spree to make Interstate 55 through Mississippi County its territory resulting in the county’s highest homicide rate on record, and won more than 30 awards for feature, news and column writing and photography.

After ten years as a journalist, Maples took on the challenge of marketing director for Arkansas’s third-largest credit union, Success Credit Union (formerly Northeast Arkansas Federal Credit Union). In 2000, he took a job with a national financial marketing firm in Minneapolis, Minn.

Three years of snow for eight months out of 12 led him back to the Mid-South where he took a job at Qsource, a regional Medicare Quality Improvement Organization, that assists healthcare providers with improving care and educating patients on various clinical topics. Two decades later, he started the third leg of a career in communications and marketing at the College.

He is a published author and lives in Cordova with his partner of 23 years, son, and four cats who each bear the name of characters in his books.

Welcome to Southwest, Lynn!