Today we’d like to introduce you to Jana Angel.
Jana, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I grew up in Rock Hill, SC and then attended NC State University on a volleyball scholarship. After playing with The Wolfpack for four years, I left Raleigh to live in Valencia Spain for my last semester. While I was aborad, I was recruited to play professionally. I signed with a team in France and played in the FFVB for five years. My last year playing, I was with a team in Bordeaux and I started interviewing my teammates so that fans could get to know each woman behind the jersey. I was using my iPhone and an Amazon tripod, with nothing but iMovie to edit in- it wasn’t pretty, but I loved the storytelling! When I retired from Volleyball, I came back to the US and attended broadcasting school so I could learn more about production, but was offered a full-time job as a spokeswoman in West Palm Beach, FL and couldn’t refuse such a beautiful area! I cut broadcasting school short to move to West Palm Beach and worked with UNITERS North America as their Brand Ambassador for two and a half years.
I wanted to dive further into broadcasting and was serendipitously introduced to a local Creative Director Liz Plummer who has been producing Trending Today on Fox Business since 2013. As a native South Floridian, she always wanted to do a local segment and I had previously written an outline for a local show that I presented to her and we quickly built Living Local. The show soon became my full-time job as partner and host of Living Local and the hosting team of Trending Today. I love the opportunity to work on both shows because they are so different! My whole life has changed in the past six months and it has been challenging, but so rewarding to finally break into an industry I have been chasing.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Getting what you want professionally rarely comes with ease, it just comes down to – do you want to sacrifice and work to get there. Getting into entertainment broadcasting at 30-is not easy, running your own business, even less so. We started Living Local when Liz was already producing another show and I had a full-time job. My previous job paid well, it was steady, and I was good at it. Taking the jump into a world where I was starting over AGAIN after I had left professional volleyball wasn’t easy. However, I knew if I was ever going to move into media, I had to take the chance I was given. There wasn’t much sleep or any free time for a while, but it didn’t matter because we were creating stories we cared about and content we knew people would love. We had pitfalls a lot of new companies deal with, we needed to grow, we needed more resources than we had, but we kept pushing and the show grew and we grew as entrepreneurs.
I had pleanty of pushback and criticism from other media entities and personalities, because I was new to the game, but no spring chicken. We had logistical challenges – we were hacked on Instagram twice, we trusted more than we should have, and expected other to work with the same tenacity we did, and that is just not the case out there. However, all of that lead us to finding our team and our rhythm. We added a full-time Head of Videography, James Desir, who creates pure magic and who makes me feel unstoppable. I haven’t always had support like I have with James behond the camera. Going into media I would hear all the full gammet- you are starting too late , you are too tall, why are you in lifestyle not sports media, you don’t have a look, you should get work done, and on and on. I mean, heard it all-but when you have a teammate that empowers you, all the other CRAP is just noise. Good teammates drown it out and you just hear cheering.
Please tell us about Living Local.
I work with Electric Productions, which is the parent company of Living Local (Fox 29) and Trending Today (Fox Business). Electric productions is owned by Elizabeth Plummer and she created the company in 2013. We create advertorial content for national and local businesses with high-quality video production and storytelling. The two platforms allow us to cater to our clients, depending on the audience they want to reach specifically. Since we are a private production company, we have the ability to control the messaging for our partners. We create fun and entertaining segments that explore the brand story and serve as evergreen marketing tools our partners use after they air. We wanted to be a one-stop-shop for digital and broadcasting needs while creating two killer show series people want to watch!
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I am so lucky that my childhood is full of great memories, but one of my favorites is getting to host The Raider Report at my middle school in Rock Hill, SC. I loved being in front of the camera knowing I was bringing my classmates all of the improtatnt information straight to their homeroom, back then the breaking news was -pizza or chicken fingers day, but at the time it was beyond cool!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.janaangel.com/
- Phone: 855.251.1286 – electric productions phone
- Email: janaangelmedia@gmail.
com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jana.k.angel/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janaangelmedia/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/janaangelmedia?lang=en
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwK7ZDIE0_aiMa4hXGY_-PA
Image Credit:
Headshot: Berkley McGaughey Photography
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