312: Joya Dass, Financial News Anchor

I have a question for you. How old were you when you discovered what you wanted to be in life when you were all grown up? I think I was maybe 11 or 12, I knew I wanted to go into news and journalism but then I got sidetracked and I did finance but hey, I found my way back. My guest today remembers vividly at three years old that she wanted to be a television anchor. And she did become a television anchor but it wasn’t without challenge. I first encountered Joya Dass when I was a graduate student interning at CNN. It was an incredible internship. I had a chance to go backstage at New York Fashion Week. I had a chance to work closely with some amazingly talented journalists and I got a chance to watch from the sidelines how anchors like Joya prepared for live shows and reported on stories from oil markets to student loans. Joya Dass is one of the first South Asian females to be seen on mainstream television in the United States. She’s been a business anchor for major networks for the last 15 years including CNN as well as ABC and Bloomberg and right now, she’s on the New York Stock Exchange floor every day for NY1 News and CBS. I just watched her give an incredible TED talk called Rethinking Failure, which we dive into on this podcast. We talk about what made her want to do that and the struggles that she had growing up in her family. In 2014, Joya was named the executive director of the South Asian International Film Festival presented by HBO. She also helms a documentary production company bearing her name. Joya is currently running a woman’s networking initiative called LadyDrinks. It champions the South Asian female entrepreneur. You want to listen to this interview because we talk about Joya’s determination with a capital D. That time in college for example when she went to the bursar’s office and the financial aid officer told her that no one had paid her tuition bill and she was not allowed to come back to school and she said, “Well actually, I’m going to figure this out” and so at the ripe age of I don’t know, maybe 19 or 20, she figured out a way to pay her own way through college.  We also talk about the entrepreneurial path of journalist today, why you need to think outside the box. If you want to be a TV anchor maybe you want to be TV anchor and other things because there’s not, as it used to be, a direct path to getting on television and being on television frankly isn’t the end all anymore. For more information visit www.somoneypodcast.com.

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