Meet Frida Jonasson

What brought Frida Jonasson to Florida was her curiosity. The GROW participant, who is spending three months as production manager at Destination Weddings & Honeymoons and Islands among other titles, wanted to see how magazine production works in another country. "Sometimes you need to challenge yourself in order to grow, both professionally and personally," she says.

Jonasson, 41, has worked at Bonnier Tidskrifter since 2004, and since 2007 at Amelia, where she is a photo editor and production coordinator. "I have contact with photographers, photo agencies, printers, prepress, marketing and ad sales," she says. At Bonnier Corporation, she's focusing on production with the magazines' page plan, keeping it updated, handling ads and making sure everything runs smoothly. "The production managers here handle all the ads, there aren't separate people to handle the ad traffic like we have at home," she says. "Another difference is that while I am part of editorial at Amelia, here I work on several titles at once and work closely with editorial but we don't sit together."

She's already seen some benefits in her first month. "I can jump between different systems and programs, they have a lot more tailored programs for handling the files and administering production and I've been able to brush up on my PC skills since I usually work with a Mac,"  she says. "Plus, my English has definitely improved!"

Her favorite part of the exchange is meeting new people. "They're so open, helpful and friendly."