Bridging the bilingual gap – Gitzel Puente, City of Tulsa

Welcome to Tulsa Talks presented by Tulsa Regional Chamber. I’m your host Tim Landes. 

My guest on this episode is Gitzel Puente, who used to report the news at KJRH and now helps provide information as a communications staffer for the City of Tulsa. In her new role, she uses her bilingual expertise to share information with the Spanish-speaking media and constituents. 

Gitzel is a first generation American, who moved to Tulsa in 2015 to work for the NBC affiliate, in what she planned on being a step up the TV news journalism ladder. As you’ll hear, she fell in love with the city and its people and decided to stay. 

She talks about going from reporting the news to helping create it and what she’s learned along the way, but we spend a lot of time talking about her passions outside of her job. 

Gitzel is active on numerous boards, including Tulsa Global Alliance and Circle Cinema, so of course we talk movies. She’s also an active participant in Tulsa’s French Club and talks about her love of other languages and why she’s now learning Italian. 

If you follow her on Instagram, you’ll see the food posts, so of course we talked about some of our favorite meals in Tulsa. 

This was a fun conversation. As you’ll hear we recorded this on a Friday morning after a long week, so we might have struggled to come up with some names and such, but it led to more laughs along the way. 

Following my conversation with Gitzel, I’ll share new music from Winston Churchbus. More on that later. 

Also, big podcast news! We’re launching a new podcast series on this channel next week. Catch new mini episodes called About Town starting August 11th. In the first episode City Editor Morgan Phillips and About Town Editor Blayklee Freed chat about their favorite stories from the August magazine, as well as things to do this month in Tulsa. 

If you haven’t picked up an August issue, there might still be some on racks across Tulsa. You can also read the digital copy or the individual articles at TulsaPeople.com. There’s lot of good stuff in this issue, including a cover story on the Union High School Renegade Regiment marching band, plus the fall arts and festival guides and more. 

OK, let’s get this going. 
 
 This is Tulsa Talks with Gitzel Puente.