My road to KTIV has been a winding one, complete with the occasional pothole. I grew up about 15 minutes north of Minneapolis and was a little girl obsessed with dogs. When I say obsessed I mean it, I had a subscription to dog fancy for most of my childhood. I spent my time "writing" books for my parent's reading pleasure and putting up signs to promote my neighborhood dog walking business. Since the age of five I wanted to be a veterinarian. That dream died when I realized I would need to put animals to sleep, not just play with them.
Junior year of high school was when I started to develop my passion for journalism in an intro to journalism course. Then, in my senior year, I took a television journalism course and anchored our Rebel Report newscast. That was also when I began e-mailing and getting in touch with local anchors asking for advice.
After graduating high school I headed up to Bemidji State where I majored in Wildlife Biology. At that point my indecisive self had decided I wanted to be a wolf researcher and work for the DNR. I stayed up there in the frozen tundra for a year before deciding to take a year off, go home and work full-time. After my time off I went for a change of pace and headed south to Mankato. I graduated from Minnesota State, Mankato with a degree in Mass Communications and an emphasis in public relations. Mankato does not have a broadcast specific emphasis and I had heard I would make more money in public relations.
Alas, I could not get the idea of broadcast out of my head. So I headed to school again after about a year of working full-time as a receptionist at a clinic in Minneapolis. I took a reporting course and workshop at St. Cloud State, about an hour north of Minneapolis. It took another year of receptionist work and constant applications to finally land myself the job as multimedia producer at KTIV.
I couldn't be happier to be here! I worked hard to get here and I plan to work even harder while I'm here. So far I love getting to know Siouxland and telling the stories of the people here. My free time for the most part is spent at the dog park or hiking with my beagle/lab mix Meeko. He goes everywhere with me and is pretty much the center of my universe outside of work.
If you have story ideas or would just like to chat, feel free to email me at kstevens@ktiv.com or follow me on twitter @ kaitEs85
