Amy Pertuset

I would say I tend to be very open-minded. I feel some people tend to be scared to keep in their comfort zones, and yes, the comfort zone is comforting for a reason - you know what you know, it's scary to branch out. But I've even told some of my new co-workers at LTN that I am a fake-it-till-you-make-it person in some cases. I just kind of see how other people operate, what the processes are, and study them, and try to mirror and just engage and see where I could help. It's about not being afraid to branch out, and not being afraid to make mistakes. Once you make a mistake, you just step up, and you correct, and you adjust, and you move on. That was one of the things I told newer engineers on my team when I worked with Disney - I'm like, we're gonna train, we're gonna get you up to speed, but you will make a mistake, it's going to happen, it happens to all of us. But as long as you make a mistake and move on, that's how you're gonna grow, and that's what helps make somebody successful in the long term.

One of the best pieces of career advice I've received is don't take things personally. One of the things I struggled with at first when starting out is that I take pride in the work that I do and deliver, so I do tend to take things personally at first, especially early on in my career. If something didn't work, or if there was any kind of negative feedback, or anything negative taken from it, I would take that personally. I've learned throughout my journey to kind of take a step back, and realize it's not always a reflection of me. Sometimes it's a reflection of the situation, or just the technology involved with it. There are things that are outside of my control that unfortunately do impact what I have to do. I've learned to understand that line of what is in my control and what can I do to help with that outcome, and what is not in my control, and how can I combat those two.

I don't want to say it's unfortunate, but especially on the technology side of broadcasting, it is definitely a very male-dominated field. I have been very grateful that even though if I had a dollar for every meeting I sat on where I was the only woman, I could probably retire today. But I feel like I've found really great mentors and leaders. My first boss and manager when I first went to ESPN, I was still just fresh out of college, and Tony Gentile was a director at the time with ESPN. For him to say to me, somebody who's just about to graduate college, 'you're gonna be a great individual, you're gonna do amazing work throughout your career' - somebody of his stature saying that meant a lot. Clearly, I'm still here and it happened over 10 years ago. My message to women is to seek mentorship, believe in their abilities, and continue pushing forward despite challenges. Find those mentors and leaders who believe in you, because that belief and support can make all the difference in your confidence and career.

I would say challenges in broadcasting include figuring out how AI can be used within the industry. Everybody's trying to figure out how we can either make content get to viewers faster, or how we can streamline getting services online. I've actually been trying to study in my off time how AI works in those aspects. I've dabbled with the common ones like ChatGPT, Copilot, and even Gemini to get myself familiar with how it operates, because AI is definitely not going to go away anytime soon. I think it's a powerful tool to enhance what we do today. So I would say that's both a challenge and an opportunity, because I think some folks are still figuring out how to balance it into day-to-day work. Another opportunity in broadcasting is the CBAM replacement that the FCC is working towards. CBAM is a traditional satellite uplink, and there's different avenues on how to move away from CBAM, and one of those is through IP video transport, which is what my current company LTN provides. That's a great opportunity where we're working with multiple different groups and figuring out what solutions we could do to help them move forward with the CBAM replacement.

I would say the big ones are integrity and just being genuine. I feel a lot of folks tend to try to over-compensate by over-committing themselves, or sometimes even trying to make assumptions about how things are done, which then can cause either unintentional burnout or incorrect project scoping. I try to just look at it from more of a human aspect first than more of a technical aspect, because some of the things I've noticed is when things need to get done, people overlook the human need to get work done. They just look at what resources are needed. What's also helped me in terms of keeping that integrity and genuine delivery when trying to keep things in the realm of reality is that I also tend to be a very empathetic person. I always try to put myself in the other person or the other team's shoes when scoping out something or trying to work with other teams, because something that's a priority to me is not going to be a priority to them. Just understanding how the two sides can meet each other so that we're both still accomplishing our goals has helped me a lot and has helped me be a very strong team member among my peers and coworkers.