Did you know that there is an Emmy Award on display in the English Department? If you take the stairs up to the fourth floor of Old Mill, you can find the Emmy Barbara Donohue generously donated to UVM last year. An Emmy Award recognizes outstanding achievements in the television industry, including entertainment, news, documentaries, and technical fields. When I learned Donohue had donated an Emmy to the English Department, I had questions: What did she win it for? How many Emmys does she have? How did she become so successful as a woman in television? I quickly got to emailing, and Donohue agreed to set up a call where we could discuss her lifetime of broadcasting accomplishments. In the meantime, I did some digging and learned that Donohue likely wasn’t missing the Emmy she gave to the university because it was one of 14 Emmys she's been awarded for her years of excellence in sports broadcasting.

The first thing I asked Donohue was, “How’d you get your start?” After graduating from UVM as a political science major in the 1970s, Donohue said she wanted to return to the New York area. It was there that she would be offered the job that made her incredible success in the entertainment industry possible: a gig at ABC Sports. Donohue, a well-connected woman, was working in the public relations department of the New York Giants when she attended a wedding. At this wedding, she was introduced to a group of ABC Sports producers who recognized her passion for sports and, on a whim, offered her a job at ABC. During our interview, Donohue said landing a position like the one she was offered would be much more unconventional in today’s climate, calling the era during which she joined the industry “a different world” and noting how modern hiring practices are less dependent on informal networks and spontaneous recruitment. While meeting the right people at a party may not be the most attainable goal for you and me to strive for, Donohue is now the president of her own production company, Grand Prix Productions, and her exceptional work in a male-dominated field is an inspiring story of talent and grit.

I asked, “How did you manage to become successful in a career so few women had broken into?” Donohue explained that while there were few other women in sports broadcasting when she got started, each woman who attempted to join the industry attacked it differently. She expressed that some women came in headstrong, with a my-way-or-the-highway kind of attitude, while other women focused on treading carefully and building professional relationships with powerful male figures. Donohue stated she never leaned too far in either extreme, but rather strove to maximize the quality of her work, saying, “I did it [the men’s] way, but did it better than them.” She prided herself on having different skill sets than her male counterparts, naming specifically her orientation toward detail and nuance.

Donohue’s unique skill set can be exemplified by a question she asked while working the Grand Prix auto race. An executive producer was doing an interview with a race car driver, and Donohue, as a lower-level employee, was expected to sit and observe silently. The driver was speaking about his connection to America versus his European home country, claiming a strong affinity for the United States. Donohue, out of line, spoke up and asked, “If you’re so American, how come you wear your wedding ring on your right hand?” This question, while seemingly minute, spoke to her keen attention to detail. Donohue’s choice to ask the driver about his ring demonstrated to her supervisors her unique ability to identify overlooked angles and produce more compelling stories, and earned her one of many promotions in her career.

Finally, I asked Donohue the sweeping question, “Out of everything you’ve worked on, what has been your favorite?” Donohue has won Emmys for eight Olympics, Wimbledon, ABC Wide World of Sports, and a World Series, to name only a few. She has done over 3,000 shows in her career, and can’t think of a sport she hasn’t worked on. From frog jumping and dominoes to the World Series and Super Bowl, you name it, Donohue has covered it. Donohue’s favorite sports to cover are equestrian sports, as Donohue herself plays polo, and her least favorite is baseball, because it’s “boring” and, she said with a laugh, “nobody ever hits anybody.” Despite her personal feelings about baseball, Donohue does a lot of work with the Los Angeles Dodgers and made a point to mention she loves working with the Dodgers coach, Dave Rodgers, because he is one of the few coaches to tell reporters exactly what happened when a player is injured, making for a more engaging story.

And Donohue’s favorite Emmy? While she doesn’t recall what she won it for, Donohue’s favorite Emmy is the one her son brought to show-and-tell at school and dropped, breaking it. While he has offered to get it fixed time and time again, Donohue says she’s always refused, saying that its imperfections and reminders of family make it the most special of them all.