Alumnus Michael Plewa
Creates digital healthcare-related content for the Medical College of Wisconsin
From a young age, Michael Plewa was constantly making videos with his friends and family, usually using his mom’s cellphone as a camera. By the time he entered Cudahy High School, he had expanded into editing, metadata and sophisticated camera work.
“I was always passionate about images,” Plewa, 21, said. He enrolled in MATC’s eProduction program in 2019 to turn his passion into a profession.
“MATC is well-known for this program,” he said. “I always heard good things about it. The more I looked into it, the more I liked what I saw.”
Plewa graduated with an associate degree in May 2022; the next month he began his full-time job creating healthcarerelated videos and other digital content for the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin (AHW) Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Plewa interned with the AHW communications team for a year while an MATC student. He helped produce short promotional videos, then worked on a large editing job. Medical College officials were so pleased with his work that they offered him a full-time position on the team.
Now [Michael] will have a chance to be behind the camera, creating and telling stories that will have a real impact on the state's health.
“Michael has a real eye and he can take an idea and really go with it,” said Jesse Ehrenfeld, M.D., senior associate dean and director of the AHW Endowment. “Now he will have a chance to be behind the camera, creating and telling stories that will have a real impact on the state’s health.”
The aim of AHW is to make Wisconsin the healthiest state in the nation, Dr. Ehrenfeld added, and the endowment’s partners need compelling content on a variety of digital media platforms to help accomplish that. “We have found that you can’t put out copy without images anymore,” Dr. Ehrenfeld said. “You really need some strong visual storytelling.”
Plewa is the perfect person for the job, said Mark S. Bergner, an instructor for MATC’s eproduction, television and audio production programs.
“He’s a strong videographer and editor with experience in music, audio editing, corporate communications and graphic design,” Bergner said. “Throughout his time at MATC, he’s proven himself to be a consistent and talented leader whose dedication and creative insights make any class, project or client he works with, better.”
Plewa will work with Medical College faculty, community partners, staff and other stakeholders to create content for AHW’s communication channels about a wide range of programs and projects across the state.
“We need to translate the science into something that almost everyone can understand,” Dr. Ehrenfeld said. “Michael has been integral in making that happen with what he has produced for us.”
Watch one of Plewa’s AHW videos, tinyurl.com/AHWvideo.