Danielle Lerner ('06), an Emmy award-winning former broadcast journalist and now lifestyle host, media consultant and content creator, visited Saint Mary’s on Thursday night. The Saint Mary’s alumna was welcomed back as the Ann Plamondon Endowed chair speaker.
Lerner began by expressing her joy to be back on campus.
“Saint Mary’s definitely still feels like home," she said. “As I was reflecting back on the last 20-plus years since I first stepped foot on campus, I’ve spent roughly ten of those years working towards my dream, and only three and half years living it.”
She pulled from her own personal experiences, the good and the bad, to share with the audience what she believes to be the keys to success. Lerner’s first piece of advice is to be adaptable when the unexpected happens.
“To understand why this is such a big one for me we have to go a ways back," Lerner said. "For most of my life I have not only hated change, but I have legitimately feared it.”
Lerner started her first news internship the summer before her senior year at the Fox News station in Phoenix, Arizona, where she said she fell in love with broadcasting and storytelling. She said she loved the process of piecing together all of the elements involved, generating story ideas and interviews, and she knew then that she wanted to go into local news.
Lerner graduated from Saint Mary's before pursuing a graduate degree from Northwestern, working toward her goal of becoming a journalist. Her dedication was later rewarded when she received a job offer for KSBY-TV in San Luis Obispo, California, Lerner said.
During her three and half years at KSBY-TV, Lerner said she worked every shift, including news, anchoring, writing and sports.
Having built a solid foundation there, she was promoted to her first full-time morning anchor position in Tuscon, Arizona. After three years in Tuscon, Lerner achieved what she was waiting for: a job offer as a main anchor in Market 12 in her hometown.
In 2014, she started as a weekend anchor, and within a couple months she was promoted to morning news anchor for the ABC news station in Phoenix. She covered big local and international stories such as the Jodi Arias trials, the Super Bowl and the 2016 election.
“I was living my dream, until I wasn't,” Lerner said.
During May of 2018, Lerner was abruptly removed from the morning show and demoted back to anchoring weekends and reporting night shifts.
“I was so devastated and absolutely crushed. I had done everything right, followed my plan and their plan to a tee, yet there I was and I wanted to quit,” she said.
During her first week back at her night reporting shift, Lerner cried the whole 23-mile drive there.
“I wasn’t just disappointed, I was scared, angry, embarrassed and I was resentful. I cried on the way to and from work for months,” Lerner said.
She explained that while on set she knew she had to make this situation work, not only for her but also for her family.
“Sometimes that's what it takes: to adapt to the unforeseen or unfortunate circumstances, it’s just putting your head down, putting one foot in front of the other and finding a way to get through the day,” Lerner said.
Throughout her speech Lerner mentioned the importance of adaptability, but she also introduced the idea of authenticity.
“Authentic is a buzz word for sure, but I’m talking about the skills, character traits and the passions that you bring to the table but other people can’t,” she said. “This one can be tricky because in order to be who you are, you have to know who you are.”
In the spring of 2019, six weeks after Lerner’s second daughter was born, Lerner was diagnosed with severe postpartum depression and anxiety. She was able to get access to resources like therapy and medication to help recover.
Lerner attributed much of her diagnosis to “spending years caring more about what others wanted than I did about myself."
"I now view my postpartum struggles as the final straw that broke me, so that I could be rebuilt," she said.
In February 2019, Lerner decided to take the next steps in her new journey by making her experiences public to raise awareness and give others hope. She created a three-part series about postpartum depression and anxiety.
Lerner concluded her lecture by discussing her own personal struggles with body dysmorphia and the physical and mental toll of working in media and broadcasting. She then provided the audience some more realistic lifestyle advice, leading to her third and final takeaway: “Be adaptable, be authentic and always be humble and kind.”
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