Zachary Galia was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his passion for sports began. When he decided to attend Adrian College to play for their inaugural NCAA DIII Hockey team and saw that they don the same colors as his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers team, he knew it was meant to be. On his first official visit, he says, "there was just a different feeling about the campus than anywhere else I had visited, and Adrian College felt like home."

While attending Adrian, Zachary originally planned to major in architecture, but decided to take a variety of courses in different areas to make an informed decision on where his interests really were. After tackling courses in philosophy, psychology, interior design, and creative writing, among others, he stumbled into his first communication class and the rest was history. "I was (and still am) captivated by everything the field represented," he says.

Zachary graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in communication: media arts in 2011 and began searching for a position within the field. After spending two years coaching women's hockey at Adrian, he accepted his first position as the Digital Media Coordinator at Michigan International Speedway. In this position, he was tasked with developing a video and social media strategy and creating all of the content. "This was one of the biggest challenges I had ever faced in my life, but I was eager to prove myself in the industry," he says.

One day in the office, a friend showed Zachary a new job posting for a tenured position with the Pittsburgh Steelers as a Social Media Coordinator in 2015. He worked hard to develop his resume and landed the position. He is the first person dedicated solely to social media in the history of the organization. Over the past four seasons, he has developed and implemented a social media strategy that has moved the organization into the upper tier of social media accounts in professional sports.

In his role, Zachary travels with the team to each game, visits parts of the country that he never before had the opportunity to see, and develops content while working with one of the best digital teams in professional sports. All of this he credits to his time at Adrian College. "The small class sizes and ability to take a deeper dive into topics that I enjoyed developed and amplified my passion to learn and grow as a professional."

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