Today's guest is Kat Brady, one of many in a long line of great station leaders in the 2010's. This Long Island native wanted no part of going to school in her home state - she wanted to go elsewhere. But at every turn, she kept hearing about Newhouse and SU. And when she saw the school, her parents saw "the look" in her eyes that many of us had. It might have helped that she was on campus on a game day.
As a freshman, Kat sought out the TV station at the activities fare, but was quickly "poached" (her words) by Allie Gold, who convinced her to come check out WJPZ and welcomed her with open arms. Kat quickly fell in love with the vibe and people, and added her name to the list of people excited to rearrange her class schedule and trek to the station at 5am to do the Z Morning Zoo. She tells us her favorite bit, "Tool or No Tool?"
Kat went abroad, but struggled with the decision to leave her Z Family for a semeter. Next thing you know, however, she was interviewing for VP of Programming over Zoom from a coffee shop in London. She got the gig.
You'll enjoy hearing about the importance Kat placed on teaching and paying forward what she learned from those before her, what she learned as PD, and a tremendous "format flip" for April Fool's Day.
Following graduation, she parlayed her former production internship at Z100 into a gig at iHeartRadio and Premiere Networks, where she further honed her skillset.
Today, Kat is the senior communications manager for the Central Park Conservancy, which runs Central Park in New York. She handles internal and external communications, and probably has the best office view of any of our alumni. You'll hear her love and passion for the park come through when she talks about her day-to-day. But she credits the commnications skills she developed at WJPZ for informing everything she does in her current role.
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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JAG: Welcome into WJPZ at 50. I am Jon Jag Gay. My guest today is someone who is spoken of extremely highly by both her classmates and other alumni from the class of 2018, former program director of WJPZ. Welcome, Kat Brady.
Kat: Hello. I'm very happy to be here.
JAG: I thank you for your time today. Start at the beginning, Kat, how'd you find Syracuse? And then the radio station?
Kat: Sure. I actively tried to avoid Syracuse. I'm from Long Island so I didn't wanna stay in New York for college at all. I wanted to go to, San Diego, Boston, wherever I could go that wasn't in New York. I was like, I'm staying out of state, that's it. And then I actually had talked to a bunch of people about what I wanted to go to school for, which was broadcast journalism.
And everyone, I'm not even kidding you, everyone said you should look into Syracuse. And my parents were super excited about that. I fought it and then my parents actually took me up to visit Boston. So we were visiting Northeastern and we were at this information session, and I had asked the woman who was showing us around, what's your journalism program like?
And she mentioned, oh, we don't really have that in depth of a program here. You know where you should go look, you should check out Syracuse. Oh, I was like, forget it, Mom, Dad, we're going in the car. Like we had planned to stop by anyway. I was like, let's just go because this is out of control.
Someone wants me to go to this school. And we got there. No plans for a formal tour. I was like, this is a formality. I'm just getting this out of the way. And it was game day, which I think is a common theme for first time visitors. And the campus was just electric. It was so fun and everyone looked like they were having an amazing time.
Everyone was so friendly. I've never seen a tailgate with such friendly people just welcoming you and shouting, Go Orange! And it was a really wonderful experience. And we walked into Newhouse and my parents say all the time, they just saw it in my face. They were like, we don't have to go anywhere else. This is it. I ended up in staying in New York, which despite all my best efforts, here I was.
JAG: It's so funny. We've had other folks in the podcast like Lauren Levine grew up in Syracuse. She's there's no way I'm gonna go to Syracuse. I'm from Syracuse. Same thing with you. You wanted to get out of state.
And it's funny as you're talking about your parents seeing the look on your face, walking into Newhouse I've got this big stupid grin on my face here, and you tell the story. Because I think for a lot of us, it was that moment. I didn't have that moment at Syracuse. I wasn't until I got to JPZ that I had that moment.
It's the whole "when you know you know" thing.
Kat: Exactly. And they had just opened Newhouse three. They had just done the Dick Clark studios. So I really came at a great time. That was the first section of New House we walked into and I saw all of, the Hall of Fame there and the big studio and all of the cage. Which who sees the cage and thinks,
"Wow. I wanna be there." But that was, yeah, that was pretty much it. I was sold and it just seemed like the best place to be, and it turns out I was right. So I'm glad I listened to all those people.
JAG: Was that when the seizure wall was new, when all the names were scrolling across on the little boards and everybody was like, whoa?
Kat: Yeah. Yes. I saw that and I was like, this is it. This is what I need to see every day to keep me going to class.
JAG: Okay, so you get to Syracuse would've been fall 2014 if my math is right. And how did you come upon the radio station?
Kat: Yeah, so I had applied to the broadcast journalism program at Newhouse and I got in there and much to Newhouse's credit, Syracuse in general, they really just open you up to every activity available. They let you know when every fair is happening. Student event, they fill you in. So I went to an activity fair out on the quad. Actually, it was a beautiful day in the fall, and I wanted to go to see Citrus. I was at their table and I must have just gone at a bad time.
There wasn't anyone there at the time. It might have been a little break between people and believe it or not, Allie Gold was at the WJPZ table, like two tables away. And she poached me. She was like, hey, are you interested in TV? And I was like, yeah, a little bit. I'm interested in entertainment, television, and news.
She was like, oh, come over here. You don't wanna be over there. Go over here. So she talks to me a little bit about radio. And radio was nothing I ever thought of. I had grown up listening to Long Island Radio. I grew up listening to Elvis Duran Z100. PLJ, BLI. And I always thought it was just like you had to be this grand, huge personality to do it.
And then I meet Allie Gold, who was a grand, huge personality. I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to fit in here. But she just said, come to the session later today. And I'll show you around whatever. And so I went to the info session and afterward I thought too, oh, she's not gonna, she's gonna see me, she's doing this to everyone on campus right now.
She won't remember, I'll go for five minutes, I'll go back to my dorm, hang out, it won't ever be a thing. And came right up to me after, and she said, let's go. We're going to a tour of the station. And she took me around and I met a couple of people and I think I signed up for a training that day. It all happened so fast.
JAG: I'm really glad you told that story, Kat, because Allie is somebody who, in doing this podcast, I've learned a lot more about and what a pivotal role she had in the 2010s decade of the radio station, rebuilding up the staff after the remodel that had happened prior to your arrival there. And just her rebuilding the spirit of the radio station and what you're talking about, how she recruited you, fits in with what everybody else has said about Allie as having such a huge role in that station in your decade.
Kat: Yeah. She is just an incredible role model. I think something that really switched in my brain when I started at WJPZ was I went to college thinking we're all kids, right? No one knows what we're doing. And I thought that was the best mentality to have in college. Everyone wants to think they know everything at that age, but you don't.
And I just wanted to keep that mindset the entire time I was there. And I got to WJPZ and I met the Allies, and I met the Jeff Kurjians, and I met all of these people who were experts and they were 20 years old. They weren't experts, but to me they were so confident in what they were doing.
They were having such a great time. And the way Allie led that station while I was there was incredible. And her big thing really was, I think she mentioned in her episode, She wanted it to be a place people wanted to hang out. And I would grab chicken tenders at Watson and I would go downstairs and I would hang out with everyone at the station and just eat there and listen to other people's shows.
And I think Allie was absolutely a huge part of that, the whole station. It's just about the people you know, they make the whole experience. So it was great to have her be my entrance into it.
JAG: It's funny you hear these same stories echoed throughout 50 years and Allie was just at that time, what other people were in the seventies, eighties, nineties, and 2000’s.
So tell me about your time at JPZ, Kat. So you come in and what do you start doing and eventually working your way up to PD?
Kat: Sure, yeah, I was super interested. And Allie, really talked up the zoos and I had met her and Jeff Kurkjian around the same time and they were just the poster people for Z when I joined.
Not any big shoes to fill or anything. It wasn't intimidating, but. I wanted to work on the Zoos and everyone I knew was like, you are a freshman in college and you are signing up to get up at five in the morning, walk to Watson. I lived on the mount. And 123 steps, it'd be snowing.
I had to walk so far and everyone was like, why are you doing this? You don't want to be in radio long term. It's an option. No one's making you do it. It's not a class. And I just immediately, the first day I was there, I saw the way everyone was interacting and I knew I was going to miss something if I didn't do it.
So I wanted to be on the Zoo. And I think my freshman year they had room for two kind of Zoo producers, two freshman zoo producers, and myself and another member of Z ended up getting them. And I was so jazzed. I think honestly, I had moved my class schedule around so I can make it work because you had to do it until 10 in the morning and I was like, who needs statistics at 9:00 AM? I'll figure it out.
JAG: You had the opposite side of it because most people are " I don't wanna take the 8:30 class." I don't wanna get up. You're like, no, I'm up, but I'm busy. I gotta push this till later in the day.
Kat: I wanna be up, but I don't wanna be in math. I wanna hang out with these new friends of mine that are really cool and talk about ridiculous things on the radio.
So it was great. My first zoo was actually Allie Gold, Jay Alter, Joey Cosco and JP Chunga. So you could not ask for a more incredible group of people and they really were, I got to watch them do it for, I think a full semester I got to AP for them and it was the best classroom I could have ever asked for.
I learned so much from the four of them than I learned in statistics. Definitely was a great use of my time and it was just so fun. And they become your family. You're waking up with these people at 6:00 AM It's such a fun time. To get to know each other in between the talk breaks, and then you go get breakfast at Varsity afterward.
And for a freshman at college, it was really nice to have older kids that were so welcoming and so willing to teach you things. And in between breaks, JP would come in and teach me how to edit clips and Allie and Joey and Jay would call me in randomly to join talk breaks and contribute and let me know, how to improve. So it was just constant air checking and skill building that was just an incredible experience.
JAG: Any bits in particular that stick out in your memory, Kat, that you can remember? You're smiling already.
Kat: Yes. Yes. My favorite to this day. And JP and Allie and. we'll find a way to work it into any conversation when we are together.
But it was JP did "tool or no tool." He would raise a scenario where you have to decide if the person is a tool or they're not a tool. And someone's a tool because you know it when you see it. So that was the catchphrase and it would be ridiculous things like it would always come in from life experience.
So he and Jay lived together. And sometimes it would be like, are you a tool if you brush your teeth in your office bathroom? And it would be because Jay and JP lived in Watson and they'd come downstairs and maybe he walked in and Jay was brushing his teeth in the Watson bathroom. It was always these really funny, inside jokes that would end up happening, but it was just a great bit.
It'd be ridiculous things. We did an alumni show, the last banquet that I was there and I was wearing sunglasses inside and that became the "tool or no tool," which is obviously a tool thing, but I was against. It, but it was great. And once you saw, how many people voted, tool or no tool, that's how you decided what it was. But it was always, almost always someone in the room.
JAG: So you were, they were voting online on Twitter, Facebook, how were you doing it?
Kat: It would be the hosts that would vote, but we would let people kind of chime in and then. After, JP graduated after a while and I was like, is it okay if I keep this going? This is yours. I don't wanna do it without you. And he was super gracious about it. Let us keep doing it. So Sam Kandell and Matt Gehring and I were on a zoo together and we ended up doing it and we would put it online and we would do a Twitter poll and have people vote and people would get so into it and have such strong opinions.
So it's still to this day, my favorite. My parents will do it sometimes. They'll text me and be like, I was in Home Depot and this guy was wearing socks with sandals. Such a tool, LOL.
JAG: That's great. Even your parents are involved. That's fantastic.
Kat: Yes. Yeah. They listen to every show, G-d Bless 'em. so they're in on all the bits.
JAG: Oh, that's great. Mom and dad always supporting Z 89. So beyond the zoo, you got into the programming side and exec staff. Tell me about that part of your journey.
Kat: Yes. So actually, not to keep like we're the same person, but Allie and I had a very similar kind of journey here where I went abroad for a semester.
So fall of 2016, I was studying in Dublin, which is something I knew I wanted to do before I even got to college. I wanted to be abroad, but being at Z made it really hard. I didn't wanna leave for a semester, and that's a semester of not doing zoos right. And you you'll lose your touch after a while.
So I was really sad to see it go, but I kept in touch with everyone and while I was there, they had mentioned that there was an opening for PD and I did not think that was something I could do. I did not have the confidence that was something that, I thought there were 12 other people in the station that could do it.
People before me that did it were Corey and Scott Stabbert and Matt Gehring had just done it. And I thought, all these people did such a great job and that is not for me. But I had a couple of people, lovely friends, reach out and they were like, just go for it. You love the station, so everything else you'll figure it out.
And so I did I'm pretty sure I did the interview process from like a coffee shop in London. I was so stressed about getting the Wi-Fi to connect and I had my little laptop with me. But yeah, I was so excited. I couldn't believe it when I got it. I freaked out. I just had it come up in my Timehop recently.
I took a picture of the letter I got in email. I was so excited and yeah, and then I was doing it, which was crazy, and I did not realize how much it entailed. I thought I'd just be helping pick the music, but thankfully Josh Wolf would come, when he came for Banquet. He does a great job filling people in on, the system that's used and how it all works, and it was very informative and enlightening and it ended up helping me a great deal.
Pretty much almost 90% of what I did as PD ended up flowing into my first job out of college. So I was super happy that I had that experience and it was so helpful.
JAG: Okay. So you talked about 90% of what you're doing translating into your first job. Before we get to your first job, what came with the PD job other than scheduling music that surprised you?
Kat: Sure. So with scheduling music, which that was the part I was jazzed about, I Sure. Love music. I can't do anything without listening to music or a podcast. I can't focus without some sort of audio coming in. So that part I was very excited for. It was, the show programming was a huge aspect of it.
At that time, at Z, we really were pushing to have a nice schedule of shows and we wanted a variety. So I think for a long time at Z there was, at least right before I got there, there were a lot of sports shows and then that was it. So that was the era when we were really pushing for other types of shows.
So we ended up having, the Red Carpet Report. We had some sports shows that were entertainment based as well. There's one of my favorites. Two of my friends, Nate White and Evan Stockton did the Midwest connection. So one's from Michigan and one's from Ohio. And they would talk about sports a little bit, but then it would always rear off into something completely non-related.
And you know what we wanted to do while I was PD was really give students the opportunity. It's a learning classroom, right? So if you have an idea for a show, let's try it out. Let's go for it. And really being available to work with those students and work with each other and figure out what's working and what isn't and give them that experience and that time to learn.
So that was a great aspect of it that I wasn't expecting. That probably ended up being my favorite part was working with people to see what worked for them. And then getting everyone exposure to different shows was fun. So we had a couple of, female students that were a little apprehensive to get into sports and just easing them into that.
And then they ended up crushing it every time we had them coming in to do more sports updates on the zoos. And then they ultimately become a bigger part of that zoo family, which was always sweet to see. So that was a really great part of it. And then, the most unexpected, but the most fun about being PD was we do the April Fool's Day station flip.
Yes. So that was wild. I was not ready for all that entailed, but it was so much fun. And Matt Gehring, who was PD before me, was really helpful. I think that's the best thing about Z is that the person who had the job before you is usually still there and they're always willing to help you out and ease you into it.
Changing all of the imaging, putting all of this new playlist together for everything. I know the year that I did it was we switched to an all boy band station.
JAG: Oh my God. That's unbelievable.
Kat: Yeah, so it was 89.1 The Boys. And all of our imaging was like NSYNC style, Backstreet Boy style.
And it was fun because we really, you get to be really creative in that role. So it was, anywhere from NSYNC and Backstreet Boys. And then, we took boy band literally. So then it'd be like Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy. And a huge thing throughout the day was having people chime in on social determining, is this really a boy band?
What qualifies as a boy band? What do you think a boy band is? So it was just a lot of fun to watch that during the day and. My favorite memory is being at Z at midnight when the station flipped and I was there, I think with Meg Flynn, Matt Gehring, Sam Kandell, they were all with me, and the first kind of promo went out and I was like, you're listening to 89.1 The Boys.
And we freaked out because it was just all of our work finally happening and such a sigh of relief. So that was a really fun part of the job.
JAG: One thing that you said that really struck me, Kat, was talking about having everybody in the role before you, being willing to teach and all that, and what you learned from all those people that came ahead of you, but also your passion as PD to pay it forward and teach the people that came after you.
That really strikes me that you said that it's really the spirit of the world's greatest media classroom we've been talking about for 50 years. Who are the people that came up behind you that you had a hand in helping out?
Kat: Yeah. The first name I think of, and we're still great friends to this day, but Hannah Butler. She just was one of those people. She came into the station for the first time. She's a year younger than me and I could see it. She had the thing right, that everyone that you know belongs at Z has that little sparkle in your eye, and I knew it. She was just Full of absolute gusto, excited to be a part of anything.
Similarly, had a great passion for the zoos that I had, so she and I worked closely together and she ended up becoming the zoo producer as well, and she was so amazing to work with. And watching her grow and a really full circle moment was after I won the Lock Award. The next year. I got to present it to her.
JAG: Oh, cool.
Kat: And we were just losing our minds over it. And I gave it to her and we were hugging and crying and I was like, I can't believe this is all from like a club at college. I never thought this would happen, but, so it was great to see her really flourish. And then, Kerri McAneney, who ended up being the GM, she and I got really close and would spend a lot of time, she became GM after.
I had been in more leadership roles and it was just nice to, watch her put forward what a lot of us wanted to keep at the station. So it was, I think our biggest thing that, you know, myself, and I think I could speak for Sam and Matt and Megan and a couple of us that were all on exec around the same time, was we wanted to keep what Allie had mentioned.
We want people to be there. We want it to be a fun, safe place for everyone to come. Even if you're not going into radio. This doesn't have to be your life, but this could be a really good place for you in college and a nice family. So we wanted that to keep going. And the people like Ke and Hannah and Anita, there's so many of them that were just wonderful examples of that moving forward.
And. I think that's one of the only reasons I felt okay leaving. I was leaving the station in good hands.
JAG: Yeah. Yeah.
Kat: I wasn't ready to graduate and I wasn't ready to stop doing Zoos, but I knew, I was leaving it to people that were just as excited about being there and left it so much. So it was really nice to see them keep taking care of it.
JAG: So you mentioned it being a great place, whether you're getting in radio or not, and you didn't plan to get into radio when you got there, but you did radio professionally after Syracuse.
Kat: I did, yes. So radio was just a big a, a huge wild card for me. I did not see it coming. I don't personally think I have the voice for it, but yeah, the, Z did it all for me.
I had such a great time and I didn't see myself, I was in the broadcast journalism program, but after about year two or three, I knew, I'm not really ready to move to Idaho and be there for two years and work these crazy hours. And I know so many people that do it, and I love them so much and they work so hard, but I just knew it wasn't for me.
So I knew radio, there was a lot of opportunity. I wanted a funny full circle moment, but I wanted to stay in New York after college. So I actually ended up interning for the Elvis Duran show when I was a junior. And I remember that was a really wild situation because it was probably August no, it was May and I had not had an internship lined up. And that is game time. You're running out, you're not gonna get one.
JAG: And you need it to graduate if you're in Newhouse.
Kat: Yeah. And Newhouse does not mess around with those. And I was panicking and I was reaching out to everyone I knew and I was like, I'm gonna have to lie. I'm gonna have to make something up so I don't get kicked outta this school.
And I was actually out with my friends at the beach and I got an email, and it was from Brody who worked at the Elvis Duran show, and he said I was done picking out interns. And I was clearing off my desk and your resume and cover letter were at the top. If you want this, you have to take it now and you'll start next week.
JAG: How very New York of him.
Kat: Yes. And it was very just, I think Allie said it during her. Interview, but I'm very into signs and I knew it as this was meant to happen. He was getting rid of resumes for the summer. He was done and he just happened to find mine. So I ended up interning there and oh my gosh, I loved it.
I loved it so much. Again, waking up. So I was commuting in from Long Island. Three days a week. So I'd wake up at 2:30 in the morning, took the train at three. Get in around 4:30, go down to Canal Street, get to the office by 5, 5:30. And then it ended up being a dual, morning show internship, and then a production internship with Ronnie Scalzo, who is still one of my favorite people on this planet.
Allie has gotten to work with him. Stephen Krainin's gotten to work with him, a couple of Z people. And so I learned a lot of production from him. And then I did that for two years, that internship. And then after I graduated, I could not find a job. It was so miserable. It was like six months of just, oh my God, I spent all of this money getting these degrees and I, I can't do it. I don't know what I'm going to do.
JAG: If you listen very closely, Kat, you can hear listeners nodding right now of everybody who's been in that exact same situation of I spent all this money on tuition. And now I'm not working. My parents are like, why did we spend all this money? And you're still at home. What's going on?
Kat: I feel like it's something that's talked about, but not enough. Yeah. And it's, so many people at Syracuse, I think, not necessarily in Newhouse, people that have jobs lined up months before the end of the school year. And it's that's not fair. I'm trying my best, I think I sent out 500 cover letters and resumes and it wasn't happening.
And finally I had reached out to Brody who had gotten me the internship and I was like, listen, if there's a janitor job open, if there is some sort of maintenance, I'll learn how to do plumbing. Anything you've got over there, let me know and I will do it. And he said I had reached out at the perfect time.
He had just thought of me for something and I ended up being a production assistant at Z100 and iHeart and Premiere Networks.
JAG: Wow.
Kat: Which was. Yeah, I was like, oh, I was so happy. I was so excited not just to have a job, but to be working there. That was my summer home for two years, and the fact that, it was this tangible, kind of final result of you weren't wasting your time. You were investing in yourself. And that's really important to remember when you're doing internships, it's so easy to get lost in the day to day you're bringing this person coffee, you're working these garbage hours, you're getting paid nothing, but you're doing it for a reason and it's easy to forget.
But that really made me remember, okay. I was doing this for me and it worked out.
JAG: That's a great lesson, and I think it's also a reflection on you that you made such a good impression with everybody at Z100 that they would consider you for a paid gig out of school, that you represented yourself you worked hard, and all the things that you did in that role that they're like, yeah, Kat's somebody we know. She's somebody we can bring in for a paid position after graduation. So that's kudos to you.
Kendall: Yeah. It helped that I was paying them too. No, I'm just kidding.
JAG: In the internship, technically, if you're doing it for school credit, right?
Kat: Exactly. So yeah, no, I was very fortunate and everyone that worked there was amazing.
And I think particularly Brody and Ronnie, I had a really great connection with them. And I think in the end you just have to show up, right? I think that's all you can do. And it's the bare minimum home you should be doing, right? So you have to show up every day and. It might not be what you want to do for the rest of your life and it might not be everything you imagined.
I've wanted to work in Manhattan my whole life. I grew up on Long Island. This was it. This was the dream. And I remember getting out on my first day at 5:30 AM on Canal Street, and I like stepped on a rat. There was like crime scene tapes somewhere. This is not how I imagined it. This is not my Carrie Bradshaw moment, but it was still amazing and I learned so much and I was pumped to be getting coffee for people and it was the Devil Wears Prada situation of I'm gonna, I'm gonna put in the work now and it's going to pay off.
And I'm very fortunate it did. I'm very aware that it doesn't always happen for people like that, but I got very lucky.
JAG: Where'd you go from that first gig and tell me about your career path since?
Kat: Sure. It's been a really strange ride for me. But after that, I was doing production for a long time and at, I think I was at iHeart and Premiere for just about a little over a year, and I ended up getting another job doing video production.
I loved audio and I did it at Z and I just realized that, I was just becoming a product of my experience and it wasn't necessarily something that I wanted to do. So I was very lucky that they gave me the job. I was so happy to be there and all the experience I had led to that moment.
But I realized, you can stay here and be comfortable forever, or you can put yourself out there and keep trying for something new until you find what feels right. So I ended up going into video production after that. And then from that job I ended up getting promoted at some point to production coordinator.
And I handled a lot more of logistics of interviews and doing, all sorts of things. And that ultimately led me to my current job, which I work for Central Park Conservancy in the city. Which is the nonprofit that maintains the park and it's the best thing that I could be doing. People, everyone at work thinks it's crazy that I was in radio before I ended up coming here.
They all were in the nonprofit space before and I'm like, nope. I was editing the Breakfast Club and bleeping Charlamagne's curse words for a year before I ended up switching lanes. But yeah, and I love what I'm doing now and I think, hindsight's 20-20, right? Everything you do doesn't seem to make sense until you get to that spot where you're like, oh, this is it.
I got all these skills and all of this experience and I think when you're in communications, you're setting yourself up for a good spot. Which is maybe a hot take, but I think you have the ability to garner all of these skills through all these different avenues and then it will help you really put yourself wherever you wanna be.
And as long as you give yourself the time and the grace to figure that out, which is hilarious coming from me because I was. 22 and I was like, my career's over, I don't know what I'm doing. And everyone was like, you're a child, please chill out. But yeah, you just need to give yourself the time. I think, and I'm really lucky that there are so many people that were alums from Z and Newhouse in general that were like, you're gonna figure it out.
I forget who told me, but plenty of people told me in Z the first step to figuring out what you wanna do is figuring out what you don't wanna do. So you gotta get in there and just try. You just have to try some things and that was helpful. Once I figured that out, I was like, oh, this is easy. There's plenty of things I don't wanna do.
JAG: So what do you do in the current role, Kat? What's your day-to-day? What kind of stuff are you responsible for?
Kat: Sure. So I'm the senior communications manager, so I handle internal and external communications. So huge aspect of my job is handling press. So I work directly with our vice president of communications and our chief communications officer.
And whenever, there's something happening at the park, there's a big restoration project. They just announced that the boathouse, the famous boathouse in the park was closed for, a couple of months and everyone was worried what was gonna happen and they just announced that it's reopening.
Dealing with questions about that. And a large aspect of my job is talking to the public, which I think.
JAG: It shows by the way.
Kat: Thank you. Yeah. It's something that I wouldn't be able to do if it wasn't for Z, like interacting with people on the day-to-day and Z is what gave me those skills.
And I will tell you, this is not the first job that I got because I know how to talk to people, which is remarkable. I got an internship in college at a congressional office because I could talk to people on the phone. And they couldn't believe that someone in my generation knew how to have a phone call.
I think the bar should be a little higher. But yeah, so it's, I love talking to people and that's what radio taught me and that was my big takeaway. I was like, okay, do I wanna get up at 4:00 AM every day? Maybe not. Do I wanna talk to people and hear what they have to say? Yes. Check, let's put that in the box and keep moving.
And so I love that part. And there's such a vast community of people in the park. There are birders, there's cyclists, there's picnickers, there's pickleball players, there's all these different communities that you get to know about. I know so much about bird watching now I never knew! So that's probably my favorite part about what I do and interacting and listening to what people have to say on social. And every day there's someone that'll tweet a beautiful picture of the park and be like, my sanctuary, my 5:00 AM walk in the park. And it just, it makes it all worth it. So that's a big aspect. And then I also do some internal communications with our staff because we have a large population of staff that are out in the park that do all of the hard work. So they fix the buildings, they mow the lawns, they make it look and feel like the beautiful place that it is. So it's a really rewarding job and I'm very thankful to have it. Central Park's my favorite place in the world, so again, a very crazy moment for me of I wanted to live here and work here my whole life.
And I'm doing it. So it's pretty wild. I'm still waiting to step on another rat and see some more of that crime scene tape.
JAG: You can clearly hear the passion in your voice for the job you have now working for Central Park. Is it important to you to be involved in the nonprofit world?
Kat: I think so, which is something I realized at my last job. I was getting very into kind of a corporate area.
JAG: This is between iHeart and Central Park. Okay.
Kat: Yes. The in between. I was getting into, the company I worked for had gotten acquired by a larger company and it was a pretty big moment of similarly, you know what I thought is I could stay here and be comfortable.
Or I can go for it and I can, try something else and see how that works out. And I have just gone really lucky with my parachutes in life where they've always opened and that's what happened here. And I just, I love people and I love giving back to people, and I love the tangible aspect of a job, right?
So going back to Z and working there and getting up at 5:00 AM trudging in a snowstorm in Syracuse to get to Watson. Turn on the mics, the electric's out, we gotta go to the server. All these, the program for the music isn't working. There's been dead air for 10 minutes. All of those crazy things that happen were worth it because they got me to this part.
And it showed me that I love the tangible aspect of completing a task and seeing, your work come to fruition. And being in a nonprofit, I get to see that pretty much every day. I'll get. Stressed about anything at work. Not to say it's not work, right? You go to work and you're like, why did this person send this email?
Yeah. Why is this meeting on the calendar? This could be a two second conversation.
JAG: This meeting could have been an email.
Kat: Yes, exactly. The classic, right? With so many zooms and yet no one knows how to work Zoom still, and we've been doing it for years, so there's of course those frustrations, but when that happens, I block my calendar for 10 minutes and I've gone to the park.
And I get to see a baby putting their feet in the grass and I get to see, someone getting proposed to on a bridge and people taking wedding pictures and it's so cheesy and so a very romantic version of myself I see when I'm there. But it, you love it and it makes you happy. It's a very easy thing that I don't think people realize the work that goes into maintaining a place like that, but people get to enjoy it. So I love to see it happen.
JAG: And you are showing your communication expertise because you've put a bow on this broadcast beautifully, and I think we're gonna leave it there. Kat Brady, class of 18. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today and telling us about your journey and how JPZ affected all of it. So thank you so much.
Kat: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me, and thank you for doing this. It's been so nice to listen to people. I needed a new podcast in my rotation and this one's very nostalgic, so I love listening. So thank you for putting this all together.
JAG: I appreciate it.