While still a student at Notre Dame, I worked in
the sports-information office. Notre Dame at that time -- at
the end of the Ara Parseghian era -- had nationally
prominent football and basketball teams. There was a lot of
attention on the university, a lot of controversy, and we
had the networks coming through with all their reporters. So
I slowly but surely got some experience with all the
networks, which gave me my first connection to the
entertainment industry.
When I left school, I wanted to try something
different, because all I had ever known was sports. I was
fortunate to get a job in Washington, D.C., as the
legislative assistant for the congressman who represented my
district back in Pennsylvania. I ended up working in
Washington for seven years and traveling all around the
word. At the same time, whenever Congress would go into
hiatus, I would go and work for the networks.
I was doing a lot of professional football; I worked for the
NFL, did seven of the Super Bowls. I did the Los Angeles and
Sarajevo Olympics. I had like a bifurcated career -- I was
kind of going back and forth, working full time in Congress
and part time with all of these events.
When I went to the Los Angeles Olympics, it just struck me
-- by melding all of the experiences I’d had, if I went into
that part of the entertainment industry, I could use
everything I’d learned and all the contacts I’d made. So I
went back to Washington and told my boss that I was leaving.
I sent out a bunch of letters to people who were running
companies in Los Angeles and New York, and one of them was
Don Ohlmeyer -- he had graduated from Notre Dame, so I said
that, you know, I’d like to come and work for him.
I waited for a while but didn’t get a response -- and then
this phone call came from out of the blue. The guy worked
for Ohlmeyer, and he said, If you can move congressmen
around the world, you can certainly move talent -- you’re
hired. So I went to New York, practiced riding the subway
for three days and went in to work for Ohlmeyer.
I worked on a Bicentennial event that was shot at the
Meadowlands. I helped pull things together for the show; it
was a big extravaganza -- part live and part on tape.
And then I came out to L.A. to work on the MTV Awards and
the Emmys.
There was a guy working across the hall from me here, Ian
Sander, and he was producing a television movie for Ohlmeyer.
I wanted to try that format, too, so I brought him a story
called “Stolen Babies.” We ended up making that movie, and
it was successful and won some Emmys. That launched our
company, Sander/Moses, and Ian and I eventually married.
I never graduated at Notre Dame; I had to go work full-time
to support myself. At one point, when I wanted to go into
news and entertainment, I was interviewing with a guy from
CBS in New York. He said to me, “You will never work at CBS
because you don’t have a college degree.”
And now here I am, running a show for CBS.
