By the time Sande Stevenson landed in front of KMOV-TV viewers in September as the traffic reporter for the morning news show, she had already made a name for herself.
Stevenson would be hard to miss by anyone paying attention to the media mix at many of the major events – entertainment in particular. She’d be at the front line of plenty of red carpets with her face beat (that’s a good thing), her hair snatched and her big red STL-TV microphone with a camera man in tow.
Turns out the path that led her to become a member of a top 20 market morning news crew is as unbelievable as it is inspirational.
“When I first started at STL-TV, I was a volunteer,” Stevenson said. “I never went to school for broadcast journalism. I just really wanted to try it out. I felt like I had a knack for it, I just didn’t have the formal training – but I was willing to learn.”
Stevenson – a believer in the “create your own path” road to success – vowed to make an opportunity for herself when she knocked on the door of STL-TV’s Andre Holman.
She had a degree in communications from University of Kansas, but her concentration was in Public Relations. The summer before she graduated, she worked as an intern for MTV. But upon graduation she worked as a communications professional for several years before deciding to follow a lifelong hunch and step in front of the camera.
“I had to convince Andre I was worth giving a shot,” Stevenson said. “I said, ‘If it doesn’t work out, just drop me – because you’re not paying me.’”
He took her up on it. But to her surprise, when she first stepped in front of a camera she “sucked” (her words, not mine).
But she kept at it, further honing her skills by way of STL-TV and with her YouTube channel featuring her first-hand experiences with fashion, food and fitness. In the videos she washes her weave, completes killer workouts and offers beauty and makeup tutorials.
Over the years, she became one of the most recognized faces of STL-TV and an internet sensation with more than 13,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel.
Holman grew into a mentor and a great support system that allowed her to develop the skills to handle a professional blessing that she would have never dreamed possible when she first stepped into his office asking for direction as a “personality.”
She believes the marriage of her work on STL-TV and her YouTube channel led to an opportunity to interview for KMOV-TV.
“A year ago I would have never thought I would be on Channel Four,” Stevenson said. “Never in a million years did I think I would be on a major morning news show. If I had gone to most people and said I wanted to be on morning news, they would be like, ‘Girl, please,’ because I don’t fit that mold.”
Stevenson is the first to admit that the process that ultimately landed her in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers each morning was far from a cake walk.
She says that the interview process was one of the most spiritually uplifting and spiritually draining experiences of her life.
“I had to get over so many fears,” Stevenson said.
Most surprisingly, a fear of live television was among the top of her list.
“Anybody who’s watched me and saw me at the very beginning, it’s a 180,” Stevenson said. “Now I’m having fun with it.”
The start of her workday begins at 1:45 a.m. Stevenson says that every day she comes from work with a new nugget of information – either from her morning show family or her mentor Holman, who tunes in regularly.
“I take it all in and I enjoy every bit of it. It was a blessing and I’m just so thankful for the opportunity,” Stevenson said.
Now Stevenson is being counted among those stories. Her role at KMOV-TV has already expanded to include two more segments, “What’s Hot on the Web” and “Pin of the day.” And this weekend she will be among the women honored at the inaugural Sisters Salute event.
“People have it ingrained in their minds that in order to do certain things you have to be a certain way and go about doing those things in a certain way,” Stevenson said. “But there are so many success stories of people who defied all types of odds and still reached a certain level of success.”
Sande Stevenson can be seen on KMOV-TV from 4:30 a.m. – 7 a.m. weekdays and on her YouTube Channel at http://www.Youtube.com/TheSocialiteLife.
