Alumna Innovates Her Career on Her Own Terms

Shanna Fuld ’16

Shanna Fuld ’16 was 12 years old when she covered her first big story. She interviewed a group of Japanese business men who were in New York City for a conference.

“I remember that I researched about their culture because I wanted to be sensitive to any cultural differences,” said Shanna, who, as a tween, hosted her own TV show on a public access channel in Queens, N.Y. “I didn’t even know that there was anything to be nervous or embarrassed about. I was just like, ‘Yeah, this is what we do.’ I loved everything about broadcast journalism. I loved the butt-ins, I loved the interviews, I loved doing the research, I loved the important people, I loved being in the studio.”

Shanna had discovered her calling through a broadcasting class in her Queens, N.Y., public middle school, and despite attending a math and science magnet high school that left little room to pursue journalism, she held onto her dream of becoming a broadcast journalist.

When it came time to look at colleges, she said the choice was clear.

“When I started to ask about journalism and broadcasting programs, everyone pointed me to SUNY Oswego—every college advisor, my teachers, even the SUNY Albany rep I met at a college fair, all said—’SUNY Oswego,’” she said.

They also told her that at SUNY Oswego, she could gain hands-on experience with equipment and from assignments through the student organizations. Plus, as a New York state resident, she’d receive in-state tuition and obtain a top-notch education for a fraction of the cost of a private university.

“So on Day 1, I walked into The Oswegonian, introduced myself and told them I wanted to write,” she said.

Shanna went on to get an anchor gig on the student-run WTOP10-TV station and continued to file at least one story a week for The Oswegonian throughout her four years at Oswego. An internship at NY1 television station that she obtained after her sophomore year led to future positions after graduation.

Today, she is carving out her own path to pursue her passion as a reporter and producer of a daily podcast in Tel Aviv, Israel, that provides a news round-up of the top stories in that country.

Intended for an English-speaking audience, her Israel Daily News Podcast is an independently run, non-affiliated show written, produced, and presented by Shanna. The podcast is free and available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and in every other podcast platform.

She launched the podcast in spring after being laid off from an on-camera reporting position at ILTV Everything Israel as the COVID-19 pandemic was hitting the world. In just a few months, she has already picked up listeners from across Israel, the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Denmark, Japan and the Philippines.

She is trying to find a way to monetize the podcast and hopes someday that this can be her full-time work.

To help finance her passion, she juggles several communications-related positions. She’s an event planner and host for the Am Yisrael Foundation, a 501(c)(3), nonprofit organization that promotes Israel engagement among Jewish young adults, hosts a weekly live, on-camera show called “Money and Culture with Shanna Fuld” for Newsrael and uses her creativity and presentation skills to help companies brand themselves through video.

Currently, she works on the podcast from 6 to 10 a.m. daily and pursues her own original stories on Thursdays, including a recent piece about Israel’s law taking 20 percent of asylum-seekers’ paychecks, which would be returned when the refugees, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, left the country.

“Hopefully, I will be able to spend my whole day chasing original stories and dedicating myself to those real investigations that I care about,” she said.

She said her experience as the social coordinator for the Oswego State women’s club rowing team has assisted her greatly with the event planner position. She also credits the rowing team with helping to change her identity and adopt a fit lifestyle.

“I never considered myself as an athletic person and then with the team, we did these crazy workouts,” said Shanna, who continues to row with a team in Tel Aviv. “I really didn’t think I would make it through to the ends of these practices. But I did. And I really think that that set me up to be a healthy, exercise-conscious person for the rest of my life.”

Learn more or subscribe at israeldaily.news. Listen to an interview with Shanna in a recent Oswego Alumni Podcast at alumni.oswego.edu/podcast.

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