{"id":13533,"date":"2026-04-01T09:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T14:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/?p=13533"},"modified":"2026-04-09T07:42:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T12:42:50","slug":"extracurricular-excellence-alena-skinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/extracurricular-excellence-alena-skinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Extracurricular Excellence: Alena Skinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

by ECHO staff<\/em>\"Alena<\/strong><\/p>\n

Talking helps.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a truism high school senior, PSEO student, and podcast host Alena Skinner has put into action with her podcast, I Can Totally Do That<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started a podcast for people with disabilities to help them try to find their passions and their careers in life,\u201d says Skinner, who started taking classes at RCTC in the fall of 2024. Next fall, she matriculates to Utah State to study political science.<\/p>\n

The show is available on YouTube and Spotify. Skinner posted her first episode in February 2025, featuring an interview with Mason Shrader, a PhD student in archaeology at Brown University who has cerebral palsy.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, this is really just a passion project,\u201d says Skinner.<\/p>\n

Inspiration for the project came, in part, thanks to a 4H project, but has grown its own momentum. Skinner\u2019s efforts so far have already garnered stories by the Rochester Post-Bulletin and the Cerebral Palsy Research Network. The process, says Skinner, has been educational.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned so many new skills. I didn\u2019t even think that podcasting was this hard, but it is. I\u2019ve learned so many wonderful things from it\u2026 I don\u2019t think any of us are fast at learning new skills. So the way I balance that is first giving myself grace. I try not to put too much pressure on myself\u2026 I have a lot of commitments and I want to do well in school. School is a first priority for me,\u201d says Skinner.<\/p>\n

One of the skills she\u2019s sharpened is time management. Striking a balance between a podcast, schoolwork, and her other extracurriculars takes forethought and discipline. She\u2019s also learned to leverage her existing social networks as she recruits new guests to her platform. In addition to 4H and campus life at RCTC, Skinner is involved in the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation. Her family is also a huge help.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily for me, my mom is a doctor at Mayo who works with kids with disabilities, like me. She has a lot of networks, because she talks and works with people who have disabilities. So that\u2019s kind of where I first built my network,\u201d says Skinner.<\/p>\n

\"aBut the recruiting for, scheduling of, and performing of an interview is just the beginning. Skinner must also edit, post, and promote the show. One early dilemma \u2013 whether or not to use TikTok after it was \u2018banned\u2019 from the US. She avoided it, then TikTok had a resurgence. She says she\u2019s learned a lot, much thanks to YouTube, and has enjoyed being able to put that learning into her shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike I\u2019m learning in my social media classes, you always have to stay up on what social media is, what\u2019s popular, and what the best tools are,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m new to this, so I\u2019m learning to promote myself, which is a skill. I don\u2019t think a lot of people know what I\u2019m up to. The more voices, the more followers that I can get, I can get more opinions, more diverse thinking, different ways of approaching things.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is hoping to increase the frequency of her posts and to broaden her audience. In addition to Youtube<\/a> and Spotify, Skinner has a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy sincere hope is it brings you the confidence to find a job, a career, a experience,\u201d says Skinner. \u201cEspecially for people with disabilities, I hope that this gives them a little bit more of a window into what is possible for them, even if the mainstream media isn\u2019t presenting it that way, even if high school counselors aren\u2019t presenting it that way to people with disabilities. I hope that this pushes them to find something that they\u2019re truly passionate about.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can find Skinner\u2019s podcast by pointing your phone\u2019s camera at the QR codes in the center of this page. If you have an idea for a guest or want to talk with Skinner, send an email to
\ndisabilityisdiversity@gmail.com<\/a>, or through direct messages on Facebook<\/a> or Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by ECHO staff Talking helps. It\u2019s a truism high school senior, PSEO student, and podcast host Alena Skinner has put into action with her podcast, I Can Totally Do That. \u201cI started a podcast for people with disabilities to help them try to find their passions and their careers in life,\u201d says Skinner, who started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1050,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[85,51,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-majors","category-news","category-campus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1050"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rctc.edu\/echo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}