Her work: Reporter for WRCB-TV, Chattanooga’s NBC affiliate. A native of Florida, she’s been here for about a year.

On reporting: “There’s nothing else I want to do. It’s what I always wanted to do. Growing up, watching the Olympics, I always paid more attention to the commentators and reporters than the athletes. Instead of pretending I was a figure skater, I pretended I was reporting.” Before coming to Chattanooga, she reported for Fox Sports in Los Angeles, often doing post-game interviews with the Dodgers. “I liked the drama of it, but I had to work really hard to get on camera.”

What she enjoys reporting about: “I like human interest stories. I like car shows and things reporters often think are jokes because they’re not hard news. I’d much rather do a human interest story any day than a car wreck. It definitely takes more effort to focus on something besides the negative, but I like to think people like to see good things happen.”

A common misconception about reporting: “That the person on camera is just a pretty face reading some words. People are always asking me, in shock, ‘You write your own stuff?’ People don’t understand that it’s hard work. It’s funny how you can work for weeks on a story, and the only feedback you get after it airs is from someone telling you that your bangs were out of place. I guess it’s just human nature when we watch TV that everything is appearance-based.”

Advice to students considering broadcasting as a career: “It’s not a 9 to 5 job or a particularly easy business to be in. The smartest thing you can do is to get experience, and that takes a long time. All those people in major network jobs worked in smaller markets for years before they moved up. You can’t just walk right into those jobs, and I wouldn’t want a job like that if I hadn’t earned it. There’s no credibility in that, and that isn’t how you learn. I’m sure five years from now I’ll look back at the tapes I’m doing now and say, ‘What was that?’ You have to allow yourself to grow and build your experience.”

More advice she gives, and has been given: “To be yourself, especially on air. So much advice is thrown your way in this business about how to talk or look or phrase things, but if you try to make everybody else happy, it’s not going to work. I just try to be myself. I always tell interns to be careful of all the advice they’re given, which does come from people who are trying to be helpful, but if something works for that person, it won’t necessarily work for you. You have to be who you are, and you’ll never make everybody happy, no matter if you’re in a small market or a big market.”

On leisure activities: “I’ve always been pretty athletic. I grew up in Lakeland, Fla., and there were always waterskiing competitions at Cypress Gardens, and I was a cheerleader in high school and in college at Florida State. I try to stay in shape by running and working out, but that’s a challenge sometimes. On a recent Friday, she covered a SWAT team standoff, which meant that “I didn’t get to eat all day, and after an all-day assignment like that, you’re too tired to work out, even if you made plans to. The job sometimes makes it very hard to work out and eat right.”

On reading: “It’s always on my list of things to do. I should read more.” A book she recommends is Maria Shriver’s 10 Things I Wish I Knew. “It’s a fast read, really good.”

On television: “I love TV, but I’m a snob about it. I like programs that are smart, like Lost. It’s the best show on TV.” She also likes “all the news shows, like 60 Minutes.”

On movies: “I am the worst person to go to Blockbuster with. I’ll fight with people about movies if they didn’t like one I thought was great. I don’t care for mainstream movies. When something becomes popular, it turns me away. I like foreign films – I should see more of them – and independent movies that aren’t concerned about confining to society’s ideals to make money.”

On Chattanooga: “It’s a great town. It’s pretty, and everyone is so nice. I like it that a lot of people don’t know about it. I don’t want them to. Then it will lose what’s great about it. Having lived in Florida, Richmond, Va., and Los Angeles, I’m still getting used to things being at a slower pace here, like going out to eat and spending hours there.” On the local dining scene, she’s partial to Thai Smile and The Mud Pie. “I really don’t like commercial restaurants. I prefer mom-and-pop-type places, and there are a lot of them here.”