Alumni spotlight: Emily Gandolfo

Emily Gandolfo ’14 always dreamed of having an office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, headquarters of NBC. The iconic Manhattan address is where, as coordinating producer, she sets editorial direction for MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“Each evening, I’ll pore through the day’s headlines and find stories that will be most interesting to our audience, and decide what we’ll cover the next day,” Gandolfo says. “I’ll coordinate with our booking producers to establish which guests are well-versed in each topic we’ll be covering to facilitate good conversations on air.”

Gandolfo spends a great deal of time looking at court filings and legal documents. She believes a major part of her work is studying as many topics as possible to produce informative summaries of every story her team will cover.

“I put together a nightly report that can run anywhere from 10 to 30 pages, depending on how big of a news day it has been,” Gandolfo says. “Our line producers use that to build the show’s rundown and our writers and segment producers convert it into scripts.”

Ask Gandolfo how she got the gig, and her answer of “luck” is part serious, part funny.

“When I applied, I knew no one on the news side of NBC,” says Gandolfo, former producer for News 12 in the Bronx and WCBS-TV. “I got a notification from LinkedIn about an open position at Morning Joe, my favorite cable news program! I applied and heard from a recruiter within 20 minutes. Four rounds of interviews, six references and two intense writing samples later, I got the offer.”