Every fall semester brings a fresh wave of college students weighing career paths, and the NAB Leadership Foundation is moving to make sure the pipeline from radio dreams to employment reality is flowing with paid internships, training, and campus outreach.
Addressing the opportunities and the next career fair set for NAB Show New York on October 21, NABLF President Michelle Duke was on the NAB’s Airtime podcast.
“It’s not just about the creativity,” Duke said. “We expose them to the business side of what needs to be accomplished, how you need to think about once you’ve completed the creative process, what else do you need to think about to get your story into the hands of the right person, in front of the right individuals who can help you make decisions? Who’s your target audience? How can this story generate revenue?”
The foundation finds students through virtual career workshops, on-campus outreach, and in-person career fairs, pairing hands-on training with paid station internships and direct mentorship that transitions into full-time station careers. NABLF has also widened its recruiting beyond journalism schools into engineering, technology, sales, and business programs.
In February, NABLF named its Class of 2026 for the Media Sales Academy and Technology Apprenticeship Program, its flagship workforce development pipeline pairing coursework in AI literacy and critical thinking with paid station internships.
Duke said, “Our goal is to get them into those internships so that they will then consider radio and television and the fun that they’ve had over the course of a summer or a semester and choose that as their career. We also work with stations to go out to these conferences because we feel like we can only be in one place at one time.”
She added, “Any station that’s not involved currently, or that is interested in being involved, or that hasn’t posted an internship, I’d encourage them to consider it, because we certainly have talented individuals available and ready to work in our business in the key areas where you need them the most.”
