Austin biz reporter Rockwell leaving to go into real estate

Lilly Rockwell, a tech reporter at the Austin American-Statesman, is leaving the paper to become a Realtor, according to Austin Inno.

She’s been covering the tech beat for the past year and helped start the paper’s 512Tech site. Before that, she had been covering City Hall and an electric utility owned by the Texas city since May 2014.

Before that, Rockwell was an associate editor at Florida Trend magazine, where she wrote feature and investigative stories for each issue and was responsible for the writing the “Around the State” section about Northeast Florida. She also helped copy edit the magazine each month and assisted in promoting the magazine in social media.

While at Florida Trend, Rockwell won a national Society of Professional Journalists award for a story she did on the state’s failure to aggressively investigate Medicaid fraud.

Rockwell had previously worked at the American-Statesman from May 2006 to April 2009 as a business reporter covering several Fortune 500 companies, including Whole Foods Market Inc., as well as the biotechnology, video gaming and advertising industries.

She is a University of Texas graduate.