Her Story
About Cherie
I've been working in media since 1996, starting my career as a news reporter at a CBS station in Peoria, Illinois right after graduating from Northwestern's journalism school. After about a year and a half on air, I transitioned to producing exclusively, first at A&E Entertainment for about a year and a half or two, then came back to Atlanta to work at ABC News Desk briefly before landing at CNN. I actually did an internship at CNN before graduate school, and when I came back, I spent four years in their business news department, producing in the control room for both the domestic side and the international business news division. I was there during major events like 9/11 and when the Euro came online in 2000. After CNN, I worked at WebMD as an assistant managing editor while attending business school, where I earned an international business degree from Georgia State College of Business and a dual degree from the Sorbonne in Organizational Management. I also have a master's certificate in Global Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, which I got around 2015, and a certificate from UCLA in screenwriting because I like school. For the past 10-12 years, I've been running my own company, Legacy Letters LLC, doing content strategy and creation, freelancing for major outlets including CNN, WebMD, BET, and Medium.com, with my focus in health and business news and editing. A recent project I'm very proud of is serving as developmental editor for 'The Happiness Reboot: The Path to Reclaiming Your Joy,' a self-help book about finding authentic fulfillment for high-achieving professionals who feel unhappy despite surface-level success, written by a Harvard Business School alum and former CEO from Atlanta. It's being published by Greenleaf at the end of March 2026, and I'm really excited about it because I think it'll resonate with a lot of people. This book represents a newer lane I've put myself in, and it was a very easy book to edit because it was so interesting.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Cherie
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I was in the audience for Oprah's second-to-last show, right before she quit the show, and between takes I asked her why she was leaving when it was such a successful show. She asked the audience to raise their hand if anyone had done the same thing every day for like 25 years, and a couple people raised their hand. Then she asked, 'Aren't you tired of it?' And then everybody was just quiet. That really stuck with me - she didn't quit, she just went on to do other things. It's about recognizing when you're tired of doing the same thing and being willing to move on to something new, even when what you're doing is successful.
02What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
For me, it's more the work that you find valuable, not just the visibility of being an on-air personality. I find value in the actual work, the reporting and the content creation itself. I've also come to understand that there's a shift that happens, especially around 50, where a lot of my peers are asking 'what am I doing here?' There's a shift in personal satisfaction versus just financial accumulation. It's about finding work that's personally fulfilling, not just achieving surface-level success. That's why I was so proud to work on The Happiness Reboot, because it addresses how having everything and achieving all of your goals can, at the same time when you get there, be personally unfulfilling. It's about authentic fulfillment, not just checking boxes.
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