On Oct. 22, 2025, the Media and Strategic Communications department hosted a “Women in Sports Media” panel. It was held in the Henry Lecture Hall in the LaPenta School of Business, and included five guests from all forms of media come in and speak to students.

Those five panelists were Katrina Adams, the first African-American women to be the head of the United States Tennis Association, Suzanne Smith, eight-time Emmy Award winner and live-game director for National Football games on CBS, Lisa Lax and Nancy Stern, 16-time Emmy Award winners who are the founders of Lookalike Productions, and Liz Edwards, the lead social media producer at CBS who was nominated for multiple Emmys.

The panel tended to focus more towards the importance of storytelling and how that can change lives. For example, both Lax and Stern brought up their work on “Emmanuel’s Gift”, a documentary on Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, a Ghanaian man who was born with a deformed leg (people with disabilities were shunned and ostracized in Ghanaian society), which brought about a bill in Ghana’s parliament to provide more rights to the disabled.

Storytelling, as the panel brought up, can bring about awareness and change, and the panel said that that, in addition to advocacy, can help sustain the current boom in popularity for women’s sports and women in sports media. The panel stressed to its attendees to continue to cover women’s sports, promote events, and be willing to be open to different perspectives from different people in order to feed that momentum.

Overall, the event was  very insightful for those interested in heading to the sports media world, as it provided valuable perspective from people underrepresented in the field. It allowed students within Iona’s media department to learn more about the skillsets needed and experience learned in the field.

“It is invaluable to be able to meet and gain advice from women in sports media, such as the trailblazers on this panel,” said Elizabeth Riccio, senior at Iona University and president of Iona University Television. “As someone who is trying to break into the industry, it feels a little less intimidating to see women who are currently in the position I want to be in. The sports industry is so oversaturated with the male perspective that sometimes it feels like there may not be a spot for someone like me. They show me not only is it possible, but it’s attainable.”