>> I knew I wanted to be a meteorologist since I was 9 years old.
And I was born in Connecticut.
And then at 9, my family moved to Richmond, Virginia.
And in Richmond, we don't get a whole lot of snowstorms but for that winter,
for whatever reason, we got some decent snowstorms.
And at the time, there was only the 6 and 11:00 news.
That was it.
We didn't have all the stuff on the Internet and news 24/7.
So at 6:00 you sat down and you watched the weather.
And so what I would do is take the remote and flip channels
between the three different meteorologists, listen to all of them,
and then make my own forecast and then call my friends and say,
"Okay, this is what's going to happen.
You don't need to do your homework tonight.
We're going to have a snow day tomorrow."
And I was right sometimes.
Not all the time.
It's an inexact science, but I was just a kid who was obsessed with snow.
And I was super shy back then as well.
I wanted to go on TV.
I told my guidance counselor this in middle school.
She laughed at me.
Didn't think I could do it.
Pageants actually helped me with self-confidence and public speaking, being on stage and going
out in the community and talking about a passion,
which for me is natural disaster preparedness.
So I did all that, went to Penn State, got my degree, and got my first job in television right
out of school in Syracuse, New York.
And I've worked up and down the East Coast at various TV stations ever since.