Alumna Blends Creativity with Passion to Forge a Successful Career in Television News

Sitting in a control room at CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, NY, Ms. Englert reflects on a career spent in the fast-paced world of television news—one in which she has kept pace with technology that evolves at an almost exponential rate—while maintaining a unique visual style that has kept her in demand for more than two decades.

A native of Franklin Square, NY, Ms. Englert was drawn to the creative. She took photos from her earliest days, framing shots precisely and developing a natural eye for composition. 

“I see things with more of an artistic eye,” she explains. “That’s just a part of me.”

In high school, she was involved in many plays. “I loved acting and musical theater, and that was what I wanted to do,” she says. 

However, when it came to college, her parents wanted her to major in something more practical. Ms. Englert decided to attend St. John’s, which had recently renovated its Television, Film, and Radio Center on the Queens, NY, campus to be one of the most state-of-the-art facilities of its day. 

“I figured the next best thing to acting was majoring in communication arts with a business minor,” she recalled. 

Her time at WRED-TV (then known as the Television Club) was  a golden age that produced a raft of graduates including Michael Sheehan ’87SVC and Anthony Caleca ’88SVC, who went on to incredibly successful careers. “I worked in all of their productions and we had so much fun,” she said. “I’m friends with them to this day.”

While she never lost her passion for acting, it was during those years when Ms. Englert began to realize she possessed a talent for working behind the camera. “The first time I directed I was definitely nervous, but you have to take a deep breath and jump right in,” she explains. “It was a different kind of art than I was used to producing, but essentially the same. From then on, I knew I wanted to do television.”

She adds, “I don’t think I could have had a better education and a better ‘coming up through the ranks’ than at St. John’s. Our production mirrored real-world productions, utilizing state-of-the-art equipment. Who does this at 18 or 19 years old? It was a priceless experience.”

During her time at St. John’s, Ms. Englert was heavily involved with WSJU Radio and the Chappell Players Theater Group. She participated in several internships, including at radio station WBAB and the nascent TV news magazine, A Current Affair—all of which gave her an expansive view of the media landscape. 

Ms. Englert has spent the bulk of her professional career at CBS. A friend who also attended St. John’s informed her about an opening there and she initially began on the operations side of the business. 

“It was not a technical job, but it was a way in,” she stresses, adding that as she became friendly with producers she volunteered to help on their shows. “Ultimately someone was looking for a production assistant for the CBS Weekend News, which was a Director’s Guild of America position.”

Without relinquishing her weekday job, Ms. Englert worked her way up to assistant director for the weekend news, and eventually, director. “It was the right place, right time,” she notes. 

Over the years, she has worked on several of the network’s highest profile live shows, maintaining a calm, positive demeanor in an environment that is chaotic, even on the best days. In addition to maintaining her technical skills in an industry that is slowly shifting toward automation, Ms. Englert constantly draws on her artistic roots when directing a show, especially when it comes to composing shots, lighting, and music.

While she has always considered herself goal-oriented, Ms. Englert never had a set plan for her career, although she is happy with its trajectory. “They say if you want to know what to do with your life, remember what brought you joy as a little kid,” she says. “I was always painting and taking pictures. I never put that to the side.” 

Today, she dedicates a significant portion of her free time to landscape photography and hopes to display her work in a gallery sometime in the future. “I think we have to evolve if we want to continue to work, and just as people in general, we have to evolve within the structure of where we are,” she reflects. “We also can’t forget where we came from. It can’t just be about getting to the next shot. It has to be about the placement of the current shot. I want to maintain what makes me a director, even though technology is how I got to be one. It still has to be about art.”