Jen Nycz-Conner felt like she applied to every college in the Big East (RIP) before falling in love with the communications program at Syracuse. Once on campus, she found a fellow freshman with a map. She and Steve Donovan went to the radio station, met B.B. Good, and the rest is history.
Living above the station in Watson as a sophomore, Jen got more involved with the station, and soon became VP of Operations as she and her 1995 classmates ran WJPZ. Actually, she wasn't technically Class of 1995 - as she explains.
She also talks about many of the friendships she's formed through the alumni association, with WJPZ family members she didn't go to school with.
During school, she secured internships with Jim Henson productions and HBO Sports, the latter of which led to work after graduation. And this included some entry level "pay your dues" jobs.
Soon, her husband Chris was in DC, and Jen was in New York. Something had to give, and she found a job working with the ProServ agency in Arlington, Virigina.
Through mergers, acquisitions, and a changing economy, Jen's next stop was Women in Film and Video in DC. This nonprofit work connected her with the Washington Business Journal, where she'd work for nearly a decade and a half, including time on air on legendary DC Radio station WTOP.
After the job at Washington Business Journal, Jen had a few different career paths in mind. When her current job at Hilton came up, it checked all of her boxes.
Through her one-of-a-kind career, Jen talks throughout today's epsiode about the lessons learned at WJPZ, and how they've served her well.
The WJPZ at 50 Podcast Series is produced by Jon Gay, Class of 2002, and his podcast production agency, JAG in Detroit Podcasts.
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0:00:24 - Jag: Welcome to WJPZ at 50. I am Joh Jag Gay. Today's guest is somebody I've been looking forward to having on for a long time. She's a very familiar face. If you come to the banquet every year, she's brilliant. She's had a one of a kind career. I can't wait to talk to her. We're going to call her class of 95. But there's a twist there that you'll hear later on. Welcome to the podcast. Jen Nycz Conner, so great to have you.
0:00:45 - Jen: Well, thank you, Jag. And so weird after listening to so many of these, suddenly to hear you like the intro coming my way. A little nerve wracking, I'll admit.
0:00:52 - Jag: It like I was telling you off the air. I was so much more nervous to be a guest than I am the host. I've got the easy part. You've got the nerve wracking part today.
0:00:58 - Jen: Great.
0:00:58 - Jag: I promise to be nice. And I'll start with you, where I start with everybody. Tell me about how you found Syracuse and then the radio station.
0:01:05 - Jen: We all have our origin stories. I feel like a Marvel character.
0:01:08 - Jag: Yeah, we all are.
0:01:09 - Jen: For me, I did not know I wanted to be when I grew up, which probably still don't. I was trying to figure out where I was going to go to school, and I'd applied, as a friend of mine pointed out at one point, he's like, did you apply to the entire Big East? Which apparently I did.
0:01:22 - Jag: RIP the big east.
0:01:24 - Jen: Yeah. R-I-P Big East. Literally. I had a deposit into both here and you'll appreciate this. Boston College, that was another option. And my parents kind of sat me down. They're like, you seem to like this communications theater drama thing. You should go there. So that's why I ended up in Syracuse and then I ended up at the radio station because that was sort of on my list of like, this sounded kind of cool.
0:01:45 - Jen: Unlike some of our other cooler broadcaster friends of the Detroit group, of the Friedmans and the Meaches who all knew of the incredible radio station. I did not.
0:01:53 - Jag: Where are you from originally, by the way?
0:01:55 - Jen: I am from New Jersey, in case you haven't guessed for the cadence of my speech, I talk way too fast. What ended up happening with me was I was in that first weekend gaggle of freshmen that just kind of roam around the streets of Syracuse, of the Hill, and I was standing up on top of Ostrom, if I remember right, and there was this guy with a really heavy Boston accent and a map that would be one Stephen Donovan.
0:02:19 - Jen: And I looked over at him and we just got to talking. I'm like, you have a map. And that's how we started to become friends. And I said, oh, one of the first things I want to do is go check out this radio station. I was like, I'll go do that. I was like, okay, cool. A couple of days later, Stephen and I go wandering ourselves into Watson Hall and plunk ourselves into the middle of the radio station and literally open the door and say, hello, I'd like to be on the air. How are you?
0:02:40 - Jen: Now, as luck would have it, the most potentially friendly person of all time happened to be on the air at that moment. That would be when Sharon Goodman, BB Good.
0:02:49 - Jag: Ah!
0:02:50 - Jen: So she, of course, like, come on in, let's talk. And that was how it started. And from there, it just kind of took off.
0:02:56 - Jag: It's funny, I interviewed BB the other day for the podcast, so it has not been released at the time of this recording, but it'll be up by the time you hear Jen's podcast. I'll add you to this list. You and Donovan and Kid Michael Rock and Dion Summers. Seemingly, she was the first person that all of you saw. So her contributions to the radio station with the great class of 95 are immeasurable.
0:03:18 - Jen: This is very true in so many ways.
0:03:20 - Jag: So you get to the station and you meet B.B., and then what happens from there with your involvement with the station, Jen?
0:03:26 - Jen: It's funny, I was kind of a slow starter. Like, I jumped right in to be on the air and got my license. I remember hearing Dave Gorab and Larry Ross. Larry "Rocket" Ross. Dave was VP of Programming and Rocket was chief announcer, and they were the ones leading all the training. And I remember thinking, they know everything. I'm never going to know any of these things. Got cleared, and I got cleared from my illustrious 4:00AM to 06:00 AM., thank you very much.
0:03:49 - Jen: But then I also had the good and also terrible fortune of being in the same class as one Dion Summers, who is the world's most gifted broadcaster of all time, who shows up at the same time. And actually, there's a funny story. I heard someone talk about having Mike Tirico in their sports broadcasting class, where they all walked in and they were like, well, we're done here. We're done. And that's kind of how I felt about Dion. You heard Dion and you're like, well, all right, that was fun. I'm going to be at 04:00 A.M. for a long time.
0:04:18 - Jen: So I started doing a shift, and I loved it, but I didn't love the 04:00 A.M. part. But and I was coming from Brewster Boland, so I do that whole, like, trek across campus. So I kind of started and stayed on and hung in there, but I didn't get really involved until the end of my sophomore year. I did a whole bunch of other things. I was doing UUTV, I pledged a sorority back in the Koracic days. You pledged that first weekend you went to school, so you literally were in a sorority by, like, week two of school.
0:04:44 - Jag: Oh, wow.
0:04:45 - Jen: And so I ended up joining Alpha Phi, which we actually have fellow Z89ers that joined from there too. Cara Bowers and Allie Lightman.
0:04:53 - Jag: Okay.
0:04:53 - Jen: They were two Alpha Phis. I did a lot of things, so it took me a little while to actually get really involved. My turning point was sophomore year. I lived in Watson Hall, literally one floor above the station.
0:05:04 - Jag: Perfect.
0:05:05 - Jen: And I was starting to think about what other things I could try. I hadn't quite found my groove. And they had senior staff announcements where you can go and apply and whatnot. So one of them was for Operations, VP of Operations. I was like, well, that seems like something I could do. I'm good with projects. I can manage. Maybe I can do that. And I went in and as you know, it's a fairly intimidating professional process. And all these years later, I still think that was on par with some of the job interviews I've really had.
0:05:30 - Jen: And I interviewed for the position and ended up getting it and all of a sudden, I was sort of like, oh gosh, I'm really doing this. And that was kind of where it started from there.
0:05:38 - Jag: So you were a VP of Ops your junior year?
0:05:41 - Jen: Yes, going into junior year.
0:05:42 - Jag: Tell me about some of the things that were going on at the radio station at that time. You've got this all star cast of characters in your class, the classes before you, the classes after you paint the picture of what it was like at JPZ 1993, 1994 ish.
0:05:57 - Jen: It was good. It was before the kind of difficult times got hit with the receivership and everything like that. We had just come off of a couple of really good years. Like I said, you had people like Dave Gorab and Rocket and a whole cast of characters, Kelly Foster, people who were running a really good business ship. And then from there we kind of were taking the mantle and I think we all can have that feeling. We're like, we're never going to be as good as the people we followed. How could we ever do that? And hopefully we matched up somewhere along the line, but we were dealing with a couple of the same issues, Oldfield, those kinds of things. But it wasn't too crazy.
0:06:30 - Jen: Sponsorship was still good back in the day. Tony Renda was in charge of Coin, as it was known at that point in time. Ryan Raffensberger was the GM and he was an amazing manager. I found some old papers the other day and found a memo from him. I was like, this is as good as any professional memo I have now in my, like, my real job life. Dion was in charge of programming, of course. His gift for that, we had a good group. There wasn't a ton of crazy issues. It was kind of a good middle ground time, I think. Friedman was there running news.
0:07:00 - Jen: It was a good group of people that were I mean, it's always a good group of people, but it was a good group that was sort of inching the dial forward as opposed to making a huge leap at that point in time.
0:07:10 - Jag: I like it. Are there any names that you can think of that aside from the usual suspects, many of which you've already mentioned, that come to mind that were instrumental or that you made relationships with at the time? She's going to her notes, ladies and gentlemen. She's going to her notes.
0:07:22 - Jen: Okay. I seriously. Yes, I am. I'll admit it. Here are the notes. Busted. This is why we're on radio, Jag, usually. So a couple of funny things. People who are incredibly important to me in my life now, I didn't know at the time were going to be yeah, good example of that is Adam and Kelly Shapiro. Kelly Foster at the time. Adam, the reason I would know Adam. Adam was on the Crazy Morning crew when I was doing my 4:00 to 06:00 a.m. Shift. So Adam, I'd have to go let him in. And he was a senior when I was a freshman. I didn't know him from well. Adam and I would go open the door and Adam and my exchange would be something and be like, hey, how are you? And I'd hear, yeah, it's early. And that was about our full exchange.
0:08:03 - Jen: So years later, through the alumni association we become friends, he and Matt Friedman's another example. I got to know Matt through senior staff, but two of them became very, very dear friends, which I never would have known at the time. And same with Kelly. Another person that I should mention, who it's so funny because she's going to laugh when she hears this. She's going to be like, are you kidding me?
0:08:23 - Jen: Bette Kestin was one of those people. Bette stayed that summer at the station going from sophomore to junior year, that kind of in between periods. She was staying there that summer, so she took the interim position for me. I learned so much about leadership from her because she was someone who kind of took what was getting started and ran with it. And as I was trying to get my feet under me when I can't go back to school, and took it over, she was just a really, really strong leader and just smart and really kind of helped me point me in the right direction of how to lead people better. So that was one of those lessons there.
0:08:58 - Jen: Velardi was another one. Chris Velardi, again, class of 95. Chris was always the kind soul who would fill in for my shift when I had some sort of conflict because I was doing too many things. He would just look at me and be like, all right, fine. And he was also amazing at it. So they traded up with that.
0:09:14 - Jag: Yes.
0:09:14 - Jen: I'm going down my list of notes here at this point in time. A couple of other names just to mention or just people that help me. Jeff Dyson, who we haven't seen a little while. But Jeff was a brilliant, technical guy who was always helpful in kind of coaching me and would sit up with me at ridiculous hours in the morning when I was still overnight. Same with Rob. Catron was another one. I remember being on the phone with him, being like, how do I phone patch?
0:09:37 - Jen: There's so many. I want to do a laundry list of names, but actually, you know, another one, too, and he's going to laugh because he doesn't remember. I bet you money he does not remember saying this, but when I was trying to learn how to be a leader at the station and you learn by doing and screwing up and making mistakes and all the things oh, yeah, it was Kid Michael Rock. Mike and I were talking at one point, and he said something that was super wise, which I still use to this day, which is why he's going to laugh at me.
0:10:01 - Jen: He had said something to the effect of just start doing and going until someone tells you to stop. And honestly, that's brilliant professional advice, which I still use 30 some odd years later. Don't wait for permission. Just start doing. Someone will tell you to stop if you've overstepped. And it's a much better way to do that rather than sit back on your heels and kind of wait for guidance. So I'm sure we'll get to other folks in there, too, but there's a whole long cast of characters.
0:10:27 - Jag: So we teased this at the beginning, and you were telling me before we hit record that you are class of 95. I just lump you in with the all star cast of characters from 95, but technically you're not class of 95. Can you explain this for the masses?
0:10:41 - Jen: Sure. So I went in. I was supposed to be 95, and I went over my degree check junior year like we all do. Wandered in, Newhouse, give me a little document, whatever, and they looked and they went, you're done. What? I had taken a bunch of AP, like, advanced placement classes in high school, and I did okay on some of them. I didn't I wasn't like a rock star. And so not every college would have accepted it, but Syracuse was kind of like, yeah, it looks good. And so I had actually completed almost a full year before I walked into to school.
0:11:12 - Jag: Wow.
0:11:13 - Jen: Not realizing. So what ended up happening was I kind of went back, and I'm like, well, hold up. I am not ready to leave school yet. I got four years, man. I want four years. So I started to kind of finagle how I can make this all work. And what ended up happening was I applied for a grad program. I did my master's as my senior year. It only cost me like another three or four months up there in the summer.
0:11:35 - Jen: But then the other interesting part was it also had a lot more financial aid, and I got like a graduate assistantship. So I remember calling my parents to tell them that I'd come up with this crazy scheme, and I think it was going to work, and I was expecting they're like, Cool, you saved us half the price tag. Fantastic. What was so great, I remember my mom so clearly telling her this, and she was all excited. I was like, great, I can save you some money. She's like, no, you're getting your Masters! And it was never even something I would have thought of, but they were just so excited about it. So, yes, I have my master's in television and radio, which I finished up my senior year, which the poor master students who were coming back and were all serious about it, I had senioritis as a Masters student.
0:12:12 - Jen: I don't recommend, do not recommend, because every time somebody wanted to go on some academic discussion that was going to go past 05:00 on the Friday class, I'm like, no, no, we're done. We're good now. Let's go.
0:12:24 - Jag: I remember taking very few credits my last semester so I could just major in Faegan's, so I understand exactly.
0:12:31 - Jen: Basket weaving, scuba diving, those things.
0:12:33 - Jag: So, Jen, you mentioned Friedman earlier. Friedman said about you, the range of communication skills she has needed for her one of a kind career path is pretty amazing. It has to, in some part, have been influenced by her station experience.
0:12:47 - Jen: That Friedman's always insightful, man, like he does this for a living or something. Yes, and actually, it's funny. When I was thinking about this, one of the best things I learned, adaptability is maybe the most valuable career skill you can have. Or at least it's up there, I think. And working at our station, working at WJPZ is literally a master class in adaptability on a daily basis. You don't know what's coming at you. You got to learn how to get along with everybody.
0:13:16 - Jen: You don't know what you're doing. And so you have to kind of figure it out as you go. And you have to learn to tweak your communication style as you go. And it's such a wonderfully, terrifying, yet safe environment in which to do that. And I mean, you've had this conversation. I've heard it on the podcast. You've had, like so many people have had that feeling. The gift of Z89 to me is that it gave me the confidence to make mistakes. It gave me the confidence to try.
0:13:44 - Jen: It gave me the confidence of, sure, I'll figure it out. Like the ability to figure stuff out has maybe been the thing that has come to my rescue more often than not in my career. Sometimes it gets me in trouble. Mind you, it does get me in trouble. But that is something I would say has been tremendously valuable. The other thing too, and I keep telling Velardi we need to pitch a story in this, like Syracuse Magazine, but the vast number of entrepreneurs, yourself included, that have come out of our group. Entrepreneurship. And when I was, we'll get to business journalism, but I was a business journalist. I loved writing about entrepreneurs because they're all believers and they believe what they're going to do is going to work. And the number of people who are entrepreneurial and I don't mean just like going and doing a startup, I mean entrepreneurial where they see a problem and they fix it in their company or they find a way to start something new for a nonprofit. We have so many people who have done that.
0:14:37 - Jen: I mean, you, Friedman, Meach, the list just goes on and on. I'm not thinking of people off the top of my head. So for me, back to Friedman's point, I don't know if I would have had the guts to kind of raise my hand and jump into things that I did had it not then from my experience at the station.
0:14:54 - Jag: So, Jen, we've talked about the things you've learned at the radio station, your time at the radio station, the amazing people you worked with, the radio station. But you've also gotten a lot out of the alumni association and all different generations of folks, right?
0:15:06 - Jen: Yeah, well, and it's funny, it was a secondary gift that JPZ gave me. I went to like a Banquet, I think, when I was in college. I think I was with Jordan Guagliumi. I think I was his honorary date for that night. I think it was like Banquet Eight because it was a long time ago. But when I was VP of operations that year, the person who was a PR director ended up dropping out. I forget, out of school or what happened, but I had to step in to kind of help run the Banquet that year. And thankfully, this guy Scott Meach had just taken over the Alumni association. So I was like, okay, good to meet you. And that's where I suddenly talk about skills you learn in life. That's where I learned event planning kind of on the fly, because it was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing, but if you could help me, he's like, yeah. And so I got to know Scott.
0:15:46 - Jen: And then I didn't do a whole lot with the Association right out of college for years. And part of the reason for that and we can get into this when we talk career, but I worked in sports television for a good number of years, and I was working on live tennis, live professional tennis. And I always had a tournament that weekend, so I could never come back. And it was like years that it was like five or six years I couldn't come back when I started coming back when I changed jobs, I started to get involved with the Alumni Association, and Scott was still leading it.
0:16:14 - Jen: And there was a host of other people who had gotten involved who were doing a ton with it. Jeff Wade, Dan Austin, and there was a whole cast of characters. I'm trying to think right now off the top of my head. So by doing that, I got to know the earlier classes, and I got to know them on a personal level, much like what you've done with this podcast, but nowhere near as in depth as you did. But suddenly people like Brian Lapis and Danny Corsun and Chris Godsick and people I'd always heard about, I actually had a chance to like, chat with and do things with. And it became this network. And then around the same time, there was a core group of people that just started coming back and it sort of became just like a muscle memory reflex thing. Like we would just show up first weekend of March because what else are you going to do to go to Syracuse but go the first weekend in March?
0:17:00 - Jen: So as a result of that, it became a big part of it was sort of my community outreach and giving back work. But I got so much out of it. And that was just more leadership lessons than that, just working with that group.
0:17:11 - Jag: Let's turn to your career because I feel like my other part of show prep besides texting Friedman, was spending about 2 hours reading your LinkedIn because there's so much to it. You've had such an amazing career since graduation. Let's take a tour through it.
0:17:23 - Jen: Okay. I don't know if it's amazing or just weird. Actually, my Twitter handle is like Office Platypus, meaning I don't fit anywhere. I'm sort of one kind of animal, sort of not. All right, so where that all began, I went to Syracuse to become a broadcast journalist, I thought. But then about a year in, I'm like, oh, I don't know if this what I want to do. Hey, this television production thing is interesting.
0:17:44 - Jen: I was a television radio film major, and I wanted to work in productions. So my first internship was with Jim Henson Productions. That would be better known as The Muppets.
0:17:54 - Jag: Which I want to hear about because that's so amazing.
0:17:58 - Jen: I'm so bummed that, in a way I'm not bummed. Social media didn't exist then, but I have zero pictures. Like, I have no evidence other than my Kermit the Frog watch, which I still have. Everybody who works there gets a Kermit the Frog watch. That was cool. So, yes, it was very funny because I was in their studio. Jim Henson, at the time, he had already passed away, unfortunately. But his production company at the time, it's on the Upper East Side of New York in Manhattan. There was like two offices. One was like the "Office Office," and then there was the production studio, which was in this brownstone.
0:18:29 - Jen: And so that's where I was for the summer. And that was a combo of production studio, photo studio, production area. And it wasn't very big, but you were kind of on top of each other. And what was really cool was like, the people who had just come through there that you would randomly bump into and kind of do a double take. And like, for example, my first week, I think it was my first week, I'm going up the stairs to this brownstone, and all of a sudden I look up, I'm like, you're Frank Oz. He goes, yes, I am like, "Hi."
0:18:58 - Jen: That was pretty much my eloquence at the time. That summer I actually worked on a production. It was a show called Dog City. It was half animation and half live action puppets. So what was great was we filmed all the live action puppet pieces of this. So you got to watch the Muppets in action.
0:19:14 - Jag: Oh, cool.
0:19:14 - Jen: And I don't know if you've ever seen this, but everything is done up in the air. Like, all of the sets are suspended on stilts, essentially about four or 5ft in the air. And they all I'm making gestures like you can see me. Podcast people just go with me. But so everything is done where they look down at TV monitors and they act with their hands above their head. And the funniest part about that is that Jim Henson and Frank Oz are both super tall. They're like six four.
0:19:39 - Jen: So everything has always been set to that standard. So any other Muppeteer has to wear these, like, KISS moon boots so they're tall enough, and that's what they do. So what was cool was that summer, the people that were acting in the show, the main character was Kevin Clash, who's the guy who plays Elmo. And so I'm like, going to get coffee or whatever I'm doing for somebody, and I walk by and all of a sudden, I hear Elmo. What is going on?
0:20:02 - Jen: He was saying goodnight to his daughter. He was calling home, and if your dad's Elmo and they say goodnight to you, it's as Elmo. Which I'm like, well, can't be that in dad points.
0:20:11 - Jag: Oh, my gosh.
0:20:12 - Jen: It was a pretty wild place to work. Here's a good JPZ not being fearless moment when I should have been. Still a professional regret. I got to sit in on potential Muppeteer training.
0:20:23 - Jag: Oh, my goodness.
0:20:24 - Jen: Right? This is cool. It's on the upper floor there. And it's again, it's like a house, essentially. It's not even like an office. It's more like a house. So all these people who are coming to learn how to be Muppeteers are there. And it's being led by Jerry Nelson. He's passed away since, but he was like New Zealand, the Flying Fish guy and a whole host. He was like one of the original people. So I'm sitting there all nervous, kind of my little corner or whatever. At one point he looks at me, he's like, do you want to participate?
0:20:46 - Jen: Great moment of professional failure. I went, oh no, I'm fine.
0:20:49 - Jag: I'm just going to sit here.
0:20:50 - Jen: Yes, I had my moment. I had my shot to be discovered as a muppet. And I let it go anyway. Yes, I did that for the summer. It was one of those very cool places to work. And I didn't appreciate it quite at the time as much as I do, looking back on it now.
0:21:03 - Jag: So, I mean, it's hard to top working with The Muppets, but you've certainly done that.
0:21:07 - Jen: I might have peaked. I peaked at 19.
0:21:09 - Jag: What came next? Because you've done so much, I don't want to skip over any of it.
0:21:12 - Jen: Well, there's some that's worth skipping. No. So that was one summer. Then the next summer I was walking through the halls of the Newhouse and one of my favorite professors poked her head out of her office. She's like, do you have an internship yet this summer? And I did not. I'm like, I do not. Do you know about boxing? Like, I know nothing. I know nothing about boxing. She's like, great, come inside.
0:21:31 - Jen: Okay. So off I go. And she has a good friend who's part of HBO Sports. Now with all sincere apologies to all of my dear sports guy friends who will be the first ones to be like, you don't know a baseball from a hockey puck. You're going to work in sports? Yeah, sure. It's like, I'll figure it out, it'll be fine. I go through all the HBO interview process and a good professional lesson. There was one of the producers I got along with really well, and she kept calling me, she's going to take the job, you can take the internship. And I had something else that was like, maybe a little cooler. I think it was like working on Real Sex or one of those things.
0:22:05 - Jag: Yeah.
0:22:05 - Jen: And I was like, I don't know. And then she kind of kept calling and she was like the best mentor that summer. So I went to work for her. So I was on what was called East Coast Productions, which basically was like the production management arm for all of HBO Sports. So you helped everybody kind of get their stuff where they need to go as part of that summer. I was sending out letters to people who were going to be runners because HBO held the rights for Wimbledon at that time, so they would have the two weeks or the weekdays leading up and then NBC would take over.
0:22:36 - Jen: So I'm sending out these letters to people like me who are going to go be runners, which are glorified production assistants, essentially. You get a lot of sandwiches and coffee and take out the trash and all that. Yeah, but I looked, I'm like, hold up. They're getting $100 a day, which was much more than my $0 a day. And you get to go to England and go to Wimbledon. Yeah, this sounds good. So I graduate.
0:23:01 - Jen: No job. And I had reached back out to one of my old bosses at HBO, and I was like, hey, you know that runner thing? How can I apply for that? She's like, oh, just send me a note. And she's like, also, do you have any friends that want to go? Yes, I do. I do indeed. So four of us and this actually started it was pretty cool. For years this went on. I forget how many we got up to, but four of us from Syracuse that year ended up going as runners. We all rented, like, a super cheap flat and just kind of crashed. One of which was my then boyfriend, now husband, who has also been a beloved supporter of WJPZ, even though who is looks at me like I'm crazy because you're not a radio guy.
0:23:36 - Jen: And then Cara Bowers, who I mentioned before, one of my sorority sisters and another friend of ours, Drew. So the four of us go over there, and we literally are runners for the two weeks. The funniest part of this part of Chris's job, my husband, who's not super tall, he got assigned to the studio that his job was getting Martina Navratilova from the studio to center court, back and forth. Mind you, Martina's like, I don't know, six inches taller than he is, but he was like the bodyguard.
0:24:04 - Jag: Oh, my G-d.
0:24:06 - Jen: So anyway, so it was a great experience. It was a great experience to be on site for a live production. Again, part of the reason it worked out well is my lessons from JPZ of adaptability and fearlessness and just kind of jumping in and doing what's needed. It was dumb things, but I worked on the it was like the highlight show, and you had to, like, log matches and do stuff like that, but you also had to bring food when people needed it. And I was just conscientious about it. At one point, there was this really tough editor, gosh, I can see his face.
0:24:33 - Jen: And they had all kind of set me up that I was going to screw this up. And I remember him being like, I need this at 03:00. And so, like, 2:59, I walk in with, like I think it was like tea and biscuits or something. And everyone starts laughing. Like, what? They're like, nobody ever actually gets that. You actually paid attention. Wasn't hard. I just got tea.
0:24:49 - Jag: Right.
0:24:49 - Jen: But it was this lesson of, like, if you learn how to help other people and do what's needed without necessarily being asked or guided and figure it out, you're going to be okay, even if it's something as simple as getting tea and biscuits. So the chain of Syracuse people going to Wimbledon, I think we got up to like 14 or 15 people over the coming years that that did it over time.
0:25:07 - Jag: Wow.
0:25:08 - Jen: So I come back after that. I actually get a job working in more boxing. One of the producers I worked with on that highlight show said to me, he's like, what are you doing to get back? I'm like, I don't know. Can look for a job. He's like, well, I need a production assistant for this. He was doing, like, a highlight show that would then get shipped over to ESPN.
0:25:24 - Jag: Okay.
0:25:25 - Jen: That was going to be freelance. And I didn't know where it was going to land. I was living at home in New Jersey with my folks and then commuting into New York. I do not recommend long commutes in your 20s. It's not the best idea. I don't know why I thought this was great. Chris had moved to DC. I stayed in New Jersey, New York, and I got a job working for this commercial production company, also through a Syracuse alum. And so that job there's a company called One Such Films. I should write a sitcom about it all these years later.
0:25:49 - Jen: Basically, it was three business partners that ran a very successful commercial production house with two sound stages. And they did a ton of food, commercials, tabletop.
0:25:59 - Jag: Okay?
0:26:00 - Jen: So there was this massive commercial kitchen between these two sound stages and my job very unglamorously, I might add. I was the receptionist, and let's not color that with anything else. I literally was answering phones all day long and there was no voicemail. So it would literally be like One Such Films, please hold. One Such Films, please hold. May I help you? It was total, like, pay your dues kind of work.
0:26:18 - Jen: But what was funny about it was I literally sat it was like a sitcom. I sat in the middle of all these crazy productions. So one day it would be for, like, Applebees. Another day there'd be, like 22 coolers rolling in because they're shooting something for Friendly's. Another day there'd be animal wranglers walking through and chickens getting lost and things like that.
0:26:38 - Jag: Did you at least eat well in this position?
0:26:39 - Jen: Yes. We actually used to joke there should be a weigh in. Because I sat next to craft services. Also terrifying. So it was me, the hand model, who was awesome, and the craft services table would hang. It like, that's where my little setup was. But yes, what was funny is, like, people can give you a hard time at chain restaurants, whatever. The guy who was he was a lovely guy. He was head culinary guy for Perkins Pancakes.
0:26:59 - Jag: Okay.
0:27:00 - Jen: Doesn't sound all that great, right? He was like CIA trained. He would do this crew meal every time they came to town. And they would, like, line up for days to come to this thing because he was so good and he was great. So anyway, that was a great place to learn humility, but just also learn how production worked and learn how pieces came together and how they worked with agencies and how all the things all kind of fit together.
0:27:22 - Jen: And so, like I said, a lot of fun, glamorous stuff, but also some funny, very good memories, too.
0:27:27 - Jag: Got it. What was next after that?
0:27:30 - Jen: From there, this was like, kind of late 90s in New York. The stuff was good and money was good, and the Internet hadn't quite taken off yet, but it was starting to. They were hiring a few new directors. The three guys who owned it represented seven or eight different commercial directors. And then they pitched all these agencies. So you have all these big agencies coming in. Then they also said, well, we also should be doing stuff with music videos. And so they hired a guy to do that who was great, and he knew I was kind of, like, struggling at the front desk job that I wanted to get out of. And meanwhile, Chris, my husband, now husband, then boyfriend, had gone to DC. Gotten a great job. He was doing awesome because he's brilliant and awesome.
0:28:04 - Jen: But I was still answering phones, and I'm like, yeah, I'm the one with the good grades. You almost didn't graduate. Yet you're doing so much better than that.
0:28:10 - Jag: I got a master's degree in four years, damn it.
0:28:12 - Jen: And I'm answering phones. I'm answered phones well, but, you know, so the new guy said, I need a production coordinator. Do you want to come do this? And they were, like, basically building on a new part of the building. I'm like, yeah, sure. So I ended up working on music videos for about two years. One of my better stories from that job, one of the directors they brought on to their roster was Alex Winter. Okay, you probably don't know who the name Alex Winter is, but when I tell you who he is, you're going to be like, oh, so you know Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?
0:28:43 - Jen: Not Keanu Reeves. The other guy.
0:28:46 - Jag: The other dude.
0:28:46 - Jen: The other dude. He was lovely. He was very nice. That was one of my first introductions to working with celebrities of like, first of all, when you see someone and they look familiar, you don't actually know them because you're like, no, I'm sure we've met. And he's like, no. And then finally I'm like, oh, you're Ted. Okay, I forget which one he is. So I did that for a couple of years. I'd finally gotten to the point where Chris and I were like, all right, one of us has to blink. One of us has to move.
0:29:08 - Jen: It's hard. It's hard. And we are country mouse, city mouse. I could go elsewhere. He would not have liked New York at all, much as I would have loved to have dragged him there. So I was like, all right, I'll come down to DC for a few years, and you're coming back to New York with me. He said great. That is 20 some odd years. I don't think we're going back. But what ended up happening was when you leave your first job, remember the first time you left a job and you were like you thought the world was going to end?
0:29:31 - Jag: First time let go? Or first time, I left of my own volition. Because there's a difference either way.
0:29:36 - Jen: Kind of go either way. In this case, it's leaving on your own. And you sort of are like, I'm never going to work again. I'm going to let them down. I look at it now. I had such not important job. So not important. But in my own mind, I needed a way to get out. That gave me a good excuse that I wasn't just quitting.
0:29:52 - Jag: Yeah.
0:29:53 - Jen: So I called my friend at HBO that I used to work for and said, hey, remember the runner thing? I'll come back and do it again. She's like, yeah, come on, let's go. So I went back to Wimbledon for a second time because this were the sports guy's gonna be like, seriously? And I overheard one of the guys who's doing graphics. I heard him talking about Arlington. I was like, hold up. Arlington, Virginia or Texas? He goes, Virginia? Why?
0:30:17 - Jen: I'm moving there. When I get back, I don't know anybody. Could you help me? He's like, oh, you should meet my wife. She works at this company called Proserv. Now, there's enough sports guys who are listening to this who are like, seriously? You had no idea what ProServ was? I did not. I knew nothing. It was a very well known, maybe not large, very well-known sports agency, one of the very early original ones.
0:30:35 - Jag: Okay.
0:30:35 - Jen: If you watch Air, the movie that's out right now with Matt Damon, the Jordan movie.
0:30:39 - Jag: Yeah.
0:30:40 - Jen: ProServ started Michael Jordan.
0:30:42 - Jag: Oh, wow.
0:30:42 - Jen: So I was like, okay, sure. So I go and I meet his wife, who was very nice, and she gives me a lovely informational interview, and we chat and have a whole conversation. Turns out his job gets relocated, so her job opens up, and they need to hire someone, like, right away. And I had just been in there, and they're like, you want to come talk to us about sure. Knowing nothing of what I'm getting into, there was a thing called ProServ television. The way sports television works in a lot of cases is there's a lot of production companies that feed into the big guys at the time. They feed into ESPN. They feed into NBC, like, not the Super Bowl, but, like, the next tier down.
0:31:18 - Jag: Yeah.
0:31:18 - Jen: So they had all these professional tennis contracts, and so they had the rights to a number of ATP men's professional tennis tournaments, and we would produce them for Fox Sports Net.
0:31:29 - Jag: Okay.
0:31:30 - Jen: When I joined, there was a couple of other contracts. One of the ones I got assigned to was the NCAA. We had the international rights for all the NCAA championships.
0:31:38 - Jag: Oh, yes.
0:31:40 - Jen: International. So it wasn't like you'd see me on CBS. It was literally like me calling, like, Azerbaijan and being like, can you get the feed? That kind of thing. But that first year, and we only had it that one year that I was there, it was like the last year they had it. Yes. All the championships from softball to hockey to whatever, but also maybe basketball. And so that was the only time in my life I got to go to the Final Four. Syracuse was not in it. That's okay.
0:32:04 - Jen: But it was really pretty amazing to work on that one. That was a cool one to work on. So what I ended up doing, I was basically kind of like a production manager. I used to joke with the crews as I worked with them later on that I was sort of like the den mother where I'm like, everybody, get there. Everybody, get your stuff done. Everybody, get the sound and picture on the air. Everybody, go home. Do not expense your parking tickets. Thank you.
0:32:24 - Jen: This was like 98, 99 before that.com bubble burst. The bubble was just taken off. Okay, this ties back to radio, oddly enough. All the deregulation was happening at this point.
0:32:34 - Jag: Starting in 96.
0:32:35 - Jen: Yes. Proserv got sold within my first year. We would then be sold four times in five years.
0:32:41 - Jag: Geez.
0:32:42 - Jen: Literally. We'd be throwing up business cards. We're done. So it got sold to a company called the Marquee Group, which was creating this sports agency, like Super Unit. Then that got sold to Bob Sillerman of Radio fame, who had a company called SFX. That eventually got sold to Clear Channel and spun off pieces of it. I think I'm getting this right. I may not be getting 100% right. Spun off to Live Nation.
0:33:08 - Jen: And so through all of this, every year, we were like, well, something new. So kind of from that, I did production, but then I also got into a little bit of show development, which is what I was really excited about towards the end of my time there, right when all that stuff was happening. And again, this is when the dot com stuff was going crazy and everybody was getting crazy jobs every which way. It was just before it burst. So it was sort of a crazy time just to be working in general.
0:33:32 - Jag: Nobody will hold it against you for not getting every single buyout and iteration and company name right at that point. Jen, seriously. Okay. So what's next?
0:33:40 - Jen: Again, more how JPZ affects things in my life. Wow. This is a therapy session. My boss in New York, when I was at the commercial production house, was very involved with Women in Film in New York. And when I was moving to DC. She gave me good advice. She's like, you go find that chapter there and get to know people. Like, it's a way that you network, okay? So I had marched in and as a volunteer, got involved with a group called Women in Film and Video, which is a professional organization of about 1000 people here in DC. And it's all film and television producers, as the name implies, and mostly women. Although we had plenty of guys too, because it was an inclusive group before its time. So I had been volunteering on their board, on its board, as I was starting to think about what I was going to do next. And so that's another point too, just career wise in all that sports production. I liked sports production. I like going to sports stuff, but I don't live and die by it the way you have to to be truly successful. To be really good at it, you have to live and die by it. And I remember sitting in the back of a production truck, like one of those 53 foot tractor trailers. My little perch was always in the back. It was really cold, and I was sitting there, and I remember looking at the benches in front of me and looking at our head producer, who was an amazing tennis producer. He loved it. And you could literally say, like, hey, who won Nottingham in 1978? And he wouldn't even think he'd be like, McEnroe. He'd just throw it back at you. So I remember looking what he was doing, and I said to myself, do I want his job?
0:34:56 - Jen: I do not want his job. I'm never going to be great at this. I'll be okay. I'm competent. I get sound and picture on the air. So that was my moment of like, all right, I got to find what I'm better at. Like, what do I really want to do? And so I was starting to kind of think that through. And that's when my friend who had become the volunteer president of this association, mind you, this association I was working for was two people.
0:35:16 - Jen: 100% of the staff was two people. They had been through a couple of people as an executive director in, like, two years, and they needed someone who knew the organization, even if they weren't like, a primo executive director. Enter me. But she was one of the most incredible managers of people and leaders of people I've ever met. And so I literally sat with her. I was like, all right, look, if I take this job, do I get to follow you around for a year or two and learn how to do this? She's like, absolutely.
0:35:39 - Jag: Good.
0:35:40 - Jen: So I took a job. There was a bottle of wine involved too. So anyway, I get this job. I go to run this nonprofit for three years, tiny nonprofit. Our whole budget, I think, was like, $338,000 a year. We had a staff of two, including me. And it was incredibly educational because it was really hard. It was hard work, but it was good because, again, taught you to bring different groups of people together. And so I did a lot of that, and that's what eventually led me to journalism. This is going to sound weird, but being chief cook, bottle washer and PR person, I had to learn how to pitch us as a story because that was some of the things I wanted. So I wandered in again, much like walking through those doors of JPZ. I walked through the doors of the Washington Business Journal and plunked myself down there.
0:36:23 - Jen: And they used to do a thing with the editor and the publisher that was sort of like, come get to know how to get your stories covered by us. Okay, that sounds good. So I wandered in there and my dear friend, now dear friend, Beth But, editor at the time, this is the love of my life job. I was there for 14 years. Not to spoil the story, but they were great because she was an editor who she wouldn't say this, but the way she kind of did things was Jim Collins, the writer, the author, has a thing about get the right people on the bus, then figure out where they're going to sit.
0:36:51 - Jag: Okay?
0:36:51 - Jen: She was big about that. And that to me, the people I've gone to work for are those people. They're the ones who get you in and figure out what to do with you, even if you have a weird skill set, like, do they're like, come in, we'll figure it out. So I end up just striking up a relationship with her, and we became friends, and I would send her things once in a while. And I think I was interviewed once, nothing of it. But I mentioned to her at one point, like, I think I want to write, but I'm not really sure how to start. She's like, well, let's talk about that. And we did, and nothing really came of it. And then she calls me out of the blue one day. She's like, hey, can you talk?
0:37:22 - Jen: I said, yeah, yeah, what do you need? She's like, I had a reporter leave today. I need to hire somebody. Like, oh, I know some people. What do you want? She's like, you are not very smart. I'm talking about you. Again, this was thinking back to JPZ courage, I guess the courage of JPZ that gives you gift of courage. I take this job, and to this day, I still smile thinking about it, because it was like, this feels like the most natural thing I've ever done to take this job.
0:37:49 - Jen: But I was terrified of taking this job to the point where I remember asking her when I finally got the job and interviewed with our publisher, who again was a dear friend to this day. But he was scary at the time when I interviewed with him, and I remember telling her, I was like, am I going to be okay? You know, I haven't worked for a newspaper, right? Like, print people beget print people. You don't come in from not print.
0:38:10 - Jag: Yeah.
0:38:10 - Jen: She's like, you'll be fine. I'm like, I don't know. She's like "you'll be fine." So literally, the first time I had to get on the phone and interview a source, you would have thought I was going in front of Congress to testify because I was so nervous and prepared. I had, like, one of those big binders. I looked like when somebody testifies in Congress the big binder in front of me. I looked like that because I was so nervous. And I look back now, I'm like, oh, my gosh. It was ridiculous.
0:38:36 - Jen: But anyway, thus began the love of my life job, because what was great, that was a very entrepreneurial place, too. And what that basically means is that they're part of a bigger network of 43 papers around the country. 44 now.
0:38:48 - Jag: 44.
0:38:50 - Jen: It's a good number. Every couple of years, I either made up a new job that we needed, that I saw we needed, I was like, Can I try this? Maybe like, sure, or something would happen. Like, for example, video was becoming hot within the print world because they saw dollars attached to it. And they looked at me, they're like, you do this. I do not. I don't do that anymore. I'm out. And it was like The Godfather.
0:39:12 - Jen: I thought I got out, but they pulled me back in. So there I was, suddenly teaching myself Final Cut Pro. And it was great. I loved it. I found out. I love that, too. So that began 14 years of time there, so all kinds of iterations. I started as a feature writer. Then I did, like, a social media thing, because it was still early days of social media. I don't even really get credit for that because I was not a great social media person. But from there, I started doing our Back Page, which is like our society grip and grin kind of section that was great for networking in DC.
0:39:43 - Jen: And if you're the one taking the picture, they're like, sure, I'll be in your picture. Although, funniest part of doing that in DC, when you think you know somebody, but you do not. They're just famous. You learn that the hard way.
0:39:52 - Jag: Right?
0:39:52 - Jen: Because you're like, no, we totally like, do we go to school together? Like, no, I'm just famous. Like, okay. Happened on more than one occasion. Joe Lieberman, I did that to him at Dulles Airport one time. Like, were you with a professor family friend? Nope. No. Vice presidential candidate. That's what you are. And I started writing a column that was on networking that went on that page. And that was became ten years of columns.
0:40:14 - Jen: And then I started doing video production for our events because we do all these awards and that would be another part of it. And then booking people into events that we would do, and moderating some of the discussions. And again, this was like the most natural job I've ever had because it was literally talking to smart people all day long that wanted to talk to you. For the most part, yeah. Business journalism. I wish I would have known it was an option in college. It just never even occurred to me.
0:40:35 - Jen: It's such a great avenue if you are someone who's curious and likes to write and likes to learn. A friend of mine used to say she's like it's like getting a master's degree, like on a daily basis. One day I'd be talking about SEC regulations, the next day I'd be talking about what to put in your resume.
0:40:50 - Jag: You mentioned networking and obviously that's a skill that was drilled into our heads both at Syracuse, at Newhouse, at JPZ. But what's really interesting is a lesson here that I don't think we've covered in the podcast so far, Jen, and that is that you have these skills, for lack of a better word, but it might be dormant for a little bit.
0:41:05 - Jen: That's a good way to put it.
0:41:06 - Jag: Whether it's writing or production or whatever it is like, oh yeah, I did that for a while. But sometimes you're in a position where those dormant skills have to come back to the surface and they're still there, they're always there. It's like almost like riding a bike. You didn't forget it, but you end up in a position where you're still using up all those things that you learned. Could be 10, 20, 25 years ago, 100%.
0:41:25 - Jen: And if you would have asked me to write this stuff out, I never could have. But yeah, learning stuff from like Lynn Vanderhoek and Karen McGee at Newhouse that had a network. Yeah, that saved me on more than one occasions. Working a red carpet in DC for a movie premiere because you have to suddenly talk to somebody, you have no idea who they are and you have to find something to talk about. Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's what shoes they're wearing, you don't know. But finding that commonality and making the other person feel at home or kind of feel like they're having a real conversation, especially in a town like DC where we can be a little transactional at times.
0:41:59 - Jen: So if you actually strike up a real conversation with somebody, not even meaning to, but just are authentic, it is such a breath of fresh air. And also other thing you learn too, same thing is look for the people that don't have that connection and bring them in. Like inclusivity is a buzzword now, but how many times the radio station were we good about that? It was one of the original inclusive places, because you'd be like, you want.
0:42:20 - Jag: To go to somebody sitting in a corner or just has an overnight shift or something like, hey, you're interested in this? And Maddie and Grace, the current PD and End of the station, talked about it in their episode where, oh, hey, you like Taylor Swift. OK, come on in.
0:42:31 - Jen: Yeah, I mean, I talk about this a lot in my current job. Jeanne Schad and I actually were talking about this. We had a women's gathering at this year's banquet, which was great. And one of the things we talked about is the power of tapping someone on the shoulder. Like, think about the people in your career who you wouldn't have expected to have a major impact on you. But sometimes it was a simple gesture or a simple question of saying, like, Jag, you're really good at this podcasting thing. Ever think about doing that for a living?
0:42:53 - Jen: Like, how many times that we don't get outside of ourselves. We're in our own head so often that when somebody asks you a question about you, it makes you think about it or points out something you're good at that you have no idea you're good at. And we all have it. It's just it's stuff that because it's easy to you, it seems like it's not a big deal, but you have the power to help people discover magical things about themselves.
0:43:15 - Jag: I love that, but it's true.
0:43:17 - Jen: I see it every day, and as I get older, I still see it even more. But think about the people who've done that for any one of us, and if we can each pay that forward or pay that back, whichever, which way it's going, it really is. If my friend Beth hadn't said to me, no, I think you should come apply for this job, I would have never have done that.
0:43:33 - Jag: Right.
0:43:33 - Jen: And you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know what you're necessarily good at. You can figure out pretty quickly what you're bad at, but it makes a huge difference and it helps people discover her new things, which is awesome.
0:43:43 - Jag: I think on some level we've all had impostor syndrome in some way, shape or form.
0:43:47 - Jen: 100%.
0:43:48 - Jag: And we talk about anybody who's done TV or radio, even if it's just at JPZ, the skill set that you have, the things you know how to do, you don't realize how many things you've learned how to do and can be good at it. I feel like that's come up a lot in this podcast.
0:44:01 - Jen: And I think of someone like Scott MacFarlane. Like Scott MacFarlane, whom I love and adore. He and Lisa both. He's like a Dion. Like, they're just brilliant, gifted people. But even he had to be behind a microphone for the first time. And the number of times when you were sitting there at four in the morning and you're trying to hit the mic button and you're terrified and you think you're gonna pass out at JPZ was no different than the first time I had to stand up in front of a crowd of 500 people and moderate a panel discussion with all these people who were, like, way smarter than I'll ever be.
0:44:30 - Jen: Nobody had ever done that the first time. The only way to do it is to do it. That, to me, facing that terrifying microphone and the mic button, which whether or not you actually got it right the first time or not, or second or.
0:44:41 - Jag: We've had many stories of alumni who have not had the best first break ever, or the first break didn't go over the air for whatever reason.
0:44:46 - Jen: And so you just got to remember, everything is like that. I wrote a column one time about lassoing the butterflies or no, it's not even lassoing them. Butterflies in your stomach, they're going to exist no matter what you do. I don't care how good you are, it they're always going to exist. You got to get them to fly in formation. If you can get them to fly in formation, then you can control it. And honestly, the fear keeps you honest anyway. You need a little bit of that. But the dormant stuff, I think, is important, too. And also being in places that feel like this is going to sound wrong, feel like boot camps, but feel like intense, like the station was intense. The Business Journal for me was intense. I didn't know AP style. I was in a room full of people that were AP style experts.
0:45:22 - Jen: And now I espouse that in what I do in all places, because it also helps me talk to reporters. Not AP style, necessarily, but because I did that job for so long, I know what they're looking for in a way that if somebody hadn't done it, just you wouldn't know it.
0:45:36 - Jag: Two quick yes or no questions.
0:45:38 - Jen: Yes.
0:45:38 - Jag: Double space after your period when typing.
0:45:41 - Jen: Absolutely not.
0:45:42 - Jag: Oxford comma.
0:45:44: Jen: No.
0:45:45: Jag: We are no longer friends.
0:45:46 - Jen: I know. My brother has disowned me over the Oxford comma. That's an AP style thing. I'm Team AP style. I can't help it.
0:45:51 - Jag: Fair enough.
0:45:51 - Jen: And the two spaces? The two spaces is something that actually there's an age divide. You can tell how old somebody is.
0:45:57 - Jag: If they learned how to yeah.
0:45:58 - Jen: It's been nice knowing you. I've really enjoyed it.
0:46:02 - Jag: All right, so Washington Business Journal. Dream job. You would think you'd stay there forever, but you didn't.
0:46:06 - Jen: I kind of did. 14 years is kind of forever.
0:46:09 - Jag: Okay, fair enough.
0:46:09 - Jen: So what basically happened, I would have stayed there forever, honestly. Back to radio, another saving grace of JPZ. As I kept changing jobs within the Business Journal. We had a partnership for 20 some odd years with WTOP 103.5 FM. If you are someone who lives or has ever lived in the Washington, DC region. You know, this is this massive news talk station that everybody has on in their cars at all times, because traffic and weather on the 8's is the only thing that's going to save you from DC traffic.
0:46:39 - Jag: Yes.
0:46:39 - Jen: So it's this powerhouse. It's got something like 1.5 million listeners, I think, something along that line. And so we had a partnership with them forever, where we basically loaned out to reporters to do Money News updates, which were consumer financial news updates, talking stock market, talking stock numbers, talking business stories, twice an hour, four times an hour, depending. And we did that forever. And so what ended up happening was I really liked working with those guys. And one was like a really great mentor to me and like, my Obi Wan. But I had told him, like, I used to do this, and he's like, okay, sure. I'm like, no, I did kind of not quite this way, but yeah. So there was an opportunity.
0:47:17 - Jen: The news director at WTOP at the time wanted to bring in some more female voices, and she had heard me our reporter used to do interviews with Business Journal reporters about stories we had done. And she heard me doing one of these just like a live hit kind of thing, and she said, who is that, Jen? She works with us here. Okay, well, I have this project. Maybe she could help voice some of it. So I started doing that.
0:47:36 - Jen: Then there was a change, and we needed somebody to fill in, essentially for the morning version of the reporter. They kind of said, would you be willing to do this for a little while? I'm like, yeah, I'd love to. Are you kidding? Sure. So that transitioned me for about a year and a half, two years before we ended the contract, unfortunately. It was such a great partnership, but I was the morning drive money news reporter for WTOP.
0:47:59 - Jen: So the way it would work is I would leave my house at 4:30 in the morning, get to the station at five, be on the air by 5:25, and then work there through about 1030, doing two and four hits an hour with stock updates and jobs updates and things like that. Then I'd jump back in my car, drive back over the Business Journal, and do the other half of my job. It was sort of a split job. Like, I sort of was like a hybrid person for a while.
0:48:24 - Jag: So like a split shift, like AM drive and PM drive, almost sort of.
0:48:27 - Jen: Sort of like that. Yeah. But it was great because my older two kids were small at the time, and it was actually an awesome schedule for that because I was done by like 02:00, three in the afternoon.
0:48:35 - Jag: Got it.
0:48:36 - Jen: But what was so great about that was I ended up on the biggest station in DC. And don't think this wasn't terrifying, you want to talk about terrifying. If you actually listen to my first hit, which I don't even know if I still have, you could literally hear because that was my script, because my hand was shaking so badly, I was so nervous. The other thing is, when I get nervous, I speak quickly. To begin with, when I get nervous, it goes up by about 90%.
0:49:04 - Jag: Oh, that's an East Coast thing. If I get nervous, I start dropping my R's like I'm back in Boston.
0:49:10 - Jen: Yeah. you just can't even hear my R's because I've gone through them. So I was part of two incredible newsrooms at the same time, and I learned so much. These were people who'd been literally one of the people there. He was celebrating his 50th, fiftieth, anniversary with WTOP because he'd been on the air that long. It was like a legacy station. So anyway, one of the best lessons I learned from there was the news director when I was trying to learn this, and I was not great coming out of the gate. I was trying, but I wasn't as smooth as I should be.
0:49:43 - Jen: And at one point, I was in her office, and she's air checking me, and we're going through it, and at one point I'm like, I don't know. And she goes, Look, Jen, it's time in the chair. It's just time in the chair.
0:49:51 - Jag: Yeah.
0:49:52 - Jen: Got to put the reps in. I still use that reference to this day when I feel like I cannot do something, I'm like, Time in the chair. And just be patient.
0:49:59 - Jag: Yeah.
0:50:00 - Jen: So anyway, I would have stayed at the Business Journal forever. We ended that contract, and then I was in a new role. That was a title I made up. I was editor at large. There was someone in DC who had that title who was cool. I'm like, that sounds like a good title.
0:50:13 - Jag: Nice.
0:50:14 - Jen: And so I became Editor at Large, which made me sound like I was, like, sneaking up and attacking people. But it was honestly you know what it was? Remember how we had the broadcast consultant role at the station?
0:50:24 - Jag: Yes.
0:50:25 - Jen: I was essentially the broadcast consultant.
0:50:27 - Jag: I love it.
0:50:27 - Jen: I put panels together. I booked people. I did that kind of I helped edit the paper. I was not the editor in chief. I would have been terrible at that. I was one of the editors, but that was part of the role. I'd read a column. It was like a really nice mix of things. So it got to a point where I was at some point, I was going to have to do something new, and I'd run out of jobs to make up. And so I kind of, in 2018, sort of had a heart to heart with myself, and I was like, all right, I'm going to do one of three things.
0:50:49 - Jen: It wasn't quite this clear at the time, but this is where it came out, I was either going to try to find a national journalism job and trade up something like the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, what have you. Door number two was strike out on my own and do something, whether it's entrepreneurial, whether it was freelance writing, whatever it might be. Door number three was get a corporate job, okay? And part of this was intriguing because I had written about business. I know business, right? How hard is that?
0:51:16 - Jen: So in that time frame, when I'm kind of grappling with this, what am I going to do when I grow up thing. The job at Hilton showed up, and part of my rules at this point in my life were had to be a company that I knew I would be passionate about what they did. That's from my old production lesson of I'd never be good at sports. So I had to come up with something I like, couldn't make widgets. It had to be something interesting.
0:51:36 - Jen: Hilton? Check. Two, it had to be not a terrible commute, because around here in DC. That is a make-or-break part of your job. And it was on the right side of the Potomac for me. I'm like, cool, we're good. And three, it was like, is it a place I can grow? And so I got the job, and I joined basically the communication staff at Hilton. So for the whatever time we're on now, fifth or 6th time, I'm changing my career again.
0:51:59 - Jen: And it was, G-d bless my JPZ experience, because it was a very humbling first six to twelve months, because I thought I knew what I was doing, because I'd been a reporter talking to all these people, right? I had no idea what the job actually was. And then when I landed it, I was like, well, this is hard. This is really hard. And so it took a while. Yes, I've been at Hilton now. I'm now in corporate communications. So basically what I do is help tell the story between we have 19 plus brands. I help tell the story of the positive things between all those brands. An example I do a lot of work with our HR group and our workplace culture. We're known for being one of the best places to work in the country. It was ranked by Fortune, et cetera. We just rolled out a new campaign called every job makes the stay, which is dovetailed to our marketing campaign, which is Hilton for the stay. And it was rolling it out and trying to get people to cover that. It's pitching our executives and landing profiles of them. It's talking about when a new brand launches, helping with some of that. So it's a lot of those pieces. I do a lot of work with ESG, so environmental sustainability work. A lot of our workplace culture work. I talk to a lot of workplace culture reporters about what's happening with returned office and how do we factor in and then helping tell the stories of what our company does, which are our team members are these incredible people that deliver awesome experiences for others, and that's what hospitality is, at the end of the day.
0:53:16 - Jag: Hilton has so many brands, I couldn't name them off the top of my head. How do you work with all those different brands? And I'd imagine there's a different target audience for each brand.
0:53:26 - Jen: And that's only one piece of the whole company. When you actually get down to it, that's what was so hard. I was used to a smaller environment where my approval process used to be. I'd look up over my cube at my editor. Hey, Doug, I'm going to write a column about this. You cool? Yeah, sounds good. All right. Approved. When I got to Hilton, I'm like, why are there 50 people on my email? Wait, now there's 75. Why are 75 people on my email?
0:53:47 - Jen: Because you are trying to coordinate a lot, talk about flying information, a lot of different objectives with everybody who has very different perspectives. Like, I'm in corporate communications, so I work with earnings. Like, when we do our earnings every quarter and reporting that way, it's objectives for the brand, it's objectives for consumers, it's objectives for marketing. So trying to get all those pieces together and get everybody kind of speaking on the same things and the same message in a way that is good for the company, which, at the end of the day, is what we're trying to do.
0:54:18 - Jag: Right.
0:54:19 - Jen: We want people to like, when you hear Hilton be like, I should stay there. That's our job. The end of the day, that's what we got to do.
0:54:24 - Jag: Fair enough.
0:54:25 - Jen: And there's lots of ways to do that.
0:54:26 - Jag: It's really been interesting going through your career and all the twists and turns, and you've done such a wonderful job because you're a professional broadcaster, you're a professional reporter, you're a professional storyteller of weaving all these lessons, of WJPZ through every twist and turn of your journey. I do want to ask you if there are any funny stories from your time at the station that we haven't covered yet that I want to wrap up with.
0:54:50 - Jen: Oh, goodness. Oh, my gosh. There's so many. You would think these would come to mind. Sometimes it's just kind of a blur.
0:54:56 - Jag: But you don't have these in your notes, too?
0:54:59 - Jen: I don't write those down. Jag. They might be found. I live in DC.
0:55:03 - Jag: True.
0:55:03 - Jen: I don't have specific moments. What I always loved, the pieces I always loved were watching people just learn, like work together. Kafele was there at the same time as me. Charlie Bobbish. I'm trying to think of few of the others. It was a cast of characters, like we were a sitcom in our own right.
0:55:20 - Jag: Isn't there a story about a UUTV sitcom somewhere?
0:55:23 - Jen: Oh, yeah. Okay. All right, so fine. You did your homework. But that's UUTV. So I don't have to talk about it.
0:55:28 - Jag: No, I need to hear this from your perspective because one of your costars mentioned this.
0:55:34 - Jen: Thanks. Dion or Donovan. I can't remember who's guilty of this. So yes, there were a few of us in that spirit of trying lots of things. Freshman year, we were part of a very short lived UUTV sitcom called Roommates. Donovan apparently has the blackmail that we once heard at a Banquet that it does exist somewhere. It was not very good, but it was a lovely group of people that worked on it and it was a lot of fun. So yes, there was a group of us that were the actors and that involved Donovan, it involved Dion, it involved me, involved my roommate Julia in Alpha Phi. There's a few other people in that too. But yes, it was a good experience to learn how hard it is to do multi camera production.
0:56:17 - Jag: Fair enough.
0:56:17 - Jen: And yes, there are some good stories from that. Try to think if there's anything like for me, you know what it is. I think I have more funny stories in a weird way from the Alumni Association weekends. My friendships at JPZ started when at the station, but they really kind of grew to adulthood as an adult. Oddly. And so to me, that's some of the most special moments.
0:56:39 - Jag: Jen, you have had such an amazing career in business, around business, learning about business. I want to ask you for advice for alumni, young alumni students. I don't even know what to ask you specifically for advice, so I'm just going to say "advice, question mark."
0:56:56 - Jen: Like any good interviewer, just ask a simple question and then let them talk. So let's see, if I had to do like, my very short top bulleted list of best pieces of advice, I would say learn to be adaptable and be flexible in that. And keep an open mind. When you're coming out of college, you don't know the number of jobs and career paths that are out there that are going to be awesome for you, and you have no idea what they are yet. So you have to find them. And that involves keeping an open mind and asking a lot of questions.
0:57:27 - Jen: Be curious. I was just having this conversation with someone the other day. When I hire people, I look for two major qualities: enthusiasm and curiosity. I can teach you everything else. Those two things, you can develop them, but if you don't show up with at least something, it's not going to work. And so I would take someone who's curious and enthusiastic over any MBA any day of the week and then have the confidence to raise your hand and tell people what you want to do and what you like and ask questions.
0:57:58 - Jen: You are going to find things that you are better at than you ever realized and getting some good guidance on that as you go, I think is huge. And then finally and I wrote about this one time. I wish I remember which student it was. It was a student years ago who had said, when I was up for an alumni banquet, she was talking to a group, and she's like, yeah, you know, I never had the confidence to make mistakes before I worked at WJPZ. Wow, that is huge.
0:58:22 - Jen: The confidence to make mistakes, it's the whole thing. It's what allows us to strive and grow and dream and do big things. And if you can just give yourself that and have it and go for it, whatever it might be, you will far succeed. Anything you're even thinking of right now.
0:58:42 - Jag: That is an amazing place to leave it. You are a wealth of knowledge. I feel like there's a million other questions I could ask you, but we've already gone a little bit long because you have so many amazing things to say. Thank you so much for your time today. Jen Nycz Conner, class of 1995-ish, we appreciate you being on the podcast.
0:58:57 - Jen: Thank you very much, Jag. It was great to be here. I really appreciate it.