saxophone in the band. She earned good grades and aspired to become a teacher, after lots of playing teacher as a kid. She once taught a boy with special needs to write his name. “I was always on the fringes of the cool group since I was from the other side of town,” she recalls. “I wore my friends’ hand-me-down clothes. Even though I sang in the Singing Stars group in high school, I couldn’t help but feel less than, so on the inside, I was always pushing for something bigger and better. I could see it and feel it, so I went to work to find whatever it might be.” When she graduated from high school, Jan’s father borrowed $500 from the bank to send her to a small church college where she could study to become a teacher. “My mother was against it, but I was determined,” she says. “I worked every job I could find to pay my way. Growing up the way I did, working came easily.” In college, she became a cheerleader and finally made it to the in-crowd, making countless friends and falling in love during her freshman year. “He was the smartest guy in the college, and I was very attracted to his linear thinking,” she recalls. “He told me he liked that I was a bubbly cheerleader, and that when he took me home, I would do all the small talking with his family so he wouldn’t have to interact with anyone.” In the middle of her sophomore year, he proposed and they married during her winter break, despite her parents’ dismay. “I was only 19, so my mother was livid,” Jan recalls. “My father was only okay with it because he came from a good family and had plans to join the Peace Corps after graduating.” Her husband’s Peace Corps dreams were interrupted, however, when he enlisted in the military to avoid the draft that came with Vietnam. He was assigned to Germany, and Jan finished college a semester early to join him and teach at the Army base nursery school in Munich. Kristin, her daughter, was born there. After a couple of years back in the states, they divorced. Never one to be down for long, Jan enrolled at Lesley University and earned her Master’s degree in education. She went on to teach kindergarten through second grade, and eventually ran workshops for the Greater Boston Regional Education Center. She also worked as a consultant for the Follow-Through Project, a program dedicated to continuing the Head Start Program in grades 1 through 4. She then returned to Lesley to teach graduate education courses and direct the outreach program. During these years, she frequently traveled for her various positions and worked closely with parents, 70
teachers, and community members. A therapist and instructor from her Master’s program was invited to be a guest on a talk show in Boston, and he needed two people to argue as husband and wife, so Jan agreed and spent four Sundays appearing on the show. Eventually, the host position opened, and a photographer encouraged her to apply. She did, but she did not get the job. One year later, she met a show producer at a little church in Harvard Square who asked to see a sample tape of her TV work. With nothing to lose, Jan hired a cameraman to film her reporting on fake stories to show that she could do the work, if it were offered. A few days later, the producer called, asking her to fill in for a talk show host who had called in sick. “They wanted me to interview the new choreographer of the Boston Ballet, and I said sure,” she remembers. “I had no idea what I was doing, and it was on live TV! Somehow I did it, and they continued to call me to report for the show. After a few months, the host left. They offered me a 13-week contract that ended up turning into a permanent position.” Jan stayed with the program for several years until the TV station was sold to another network, which cut all local programming and left Jan without a job. With a daughter in high school and no leads, she heard about an opening for a reporter in Portland, Maine, so she flew up for the interview. The meeting went so well that the News Director asked her to sit on set with the anchorman and read the anchorwoman’s part. Jan had no experience as an anchor, but she made it through the scripts and landed the job. “It was a huge honor, but also terrifying,” she confesses. “It was a big job, and a lot of the responsibility for the ratings would ride, in part, on my performance. I decided to go to every parade, every festival, kiss every baby, and make every appearance possible so that, even if I flunked myself out of the job, I would be embedded in the community.” Jan stayed with Channel 6 for four years, and during that time, she met her current husband, Michael O’Sullivan. After several years of dating, he was offered a job in D.C. that would allow him to put his three sons through college, so Jan began looking for jobs in the area. With the help of her Portland news director, she was invited to meet with Channel 9. “After my interview, they asked me to join them in the conference room so I could meet the rest of the team,” she says. “I met one gentleman who was excited to talk with me about Portland and his love of Maine Lobsters. Another gentleman asked me if I would crave the anchor position, since I had been an anchor. I told him that I was at an age where being an anchor wasn’t as important as
Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area — Volume 8