world and eventually started his own highly successful business. She credits them with teaching her to respect the uniqueness of others and to work hard to make her dreams come true.
Struggling with Illness Maureen knows a lot about childhood illness. She was born with a birth de- fect that required multiple operations and hospital stays. She missed a great deal of school and struggled with her academics. Years later as an adult, she discovered that not only had her ill- ness impacted on her learning, but she also suffers from dyslexia.
When Maureen was 14 years old, PBS produced a documentary that includ- ed an interview with Maureen and her mother about dealing with her birth defect. After the interview, the PBS producer pulled Maureen aside and told her she should consider a career in television. Her mother agreed, and the young girl tucked the idea away in the back of her mind.
As a student at West Charlotte High School, Maureen was given a chance to spend a few afternoons at WBTV shadowing a TV anchor and getting a taste of what a newsroom was like. A few years later, after her first semester at East Carolina University, she asked the general manager of WBTV if she
32 Connect And Grow With Women In Our Community
could get a job at the station. In what turned out to be prophetic words, the manager advised her to come back when she had some experience.
As a freshman at East Carolina study- ing journalism and speech, Maureen helped restart the campus radio sta- tion and got her first experience in front of a mic. One day someone from a local TV station called the college asking about Maureen. She was of- fered an audition for an on-air position at a station in Washington, North Caro- lina. She didn’t have a car at the time, and got a ride with a graduate student who was also auditioning for the same job. Much to everyone’s surprise, Mau- reen was the one chosen. She admits that her inexperience caught up with her, and she eventually lost the job.
That summer her parents sent her to the South of France as a belated high school graduation present. On the beach one afternoon, Maureen hap- pened to meet a beauty queen from Texas, who had just been given a TV job to cover a pageant back home. Maureen was stunned. If this girl, with no experience, could get a job doing TV work, Maureen knew she could, too. She cut her vacation short, headed home and got a nonpaying weekend job with a station in Greenville, while still going to school.
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