Megan Saunders ’15, a senior producer at NBCUniversal Local in Boston, MA, has built a stellar career on the foundation of self-motivation and seizing opportunities. This drive led her team to win the 2023 Boston-New England Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Event Coverage.

Saunders and her team were awarded for their coverage of the 2023 Boston Pride for the People Parade. Having won three Northwest Regional Emmys previously for coverage of breaking news events, including extreme weather, natural disasters and Olympic women’s hockey, Saunders said that this event was altogether different.

“When it comes to breaking news, you’re just kind of lucky,” said Saunders. “You just have to wait and hope that a crazy event is going to happen and that you’ll react well.

“This (opportunity) isn’t something that happened to me; this is something I made happen.”

The parade occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and was run by an organization without experience in news coverage, creating an opportunity for Saunders to bring a new vision to life. “When this (parade) was coming onto the scene, no one had done anything about it before, so they gave me this opportunity because I had been raising my hand,” she said.

Raising her hand is a skill that has helped Saunders forge her own path in news production since her time as executive producer at Eastern’s ETV News. “Eastern has the opportunities if you go and get them,” she said.

“I was like, ‘I love TV, so I’m going to be on the board of the club. I’m going to audition for the anchor position. I’m going to apply for the lab assistant position.’ I took advantage of the opportunities that Eastern has on campus and all the resources, and that’s why I’m here,” said Saunders.

“You can do as much or as little as you want at Eastern, but if you want to succeed, it has enough of the resources there so you can get a pretty decent education before you get into the workforce.”

The hands-on experience Saunders has gained through the years has helped her refine her creative skill set with which she and her team covered the parade. “For Pride, I got a huge (stage) to be as bright and vibrant and loud as I could, and that’s kind of my natural creativity,” she said.

“Being able to exercise that, I wanted rainbows, I wanted overlays, I wanted bright colors. I worked with an editor, and I told my editor my vision.”

Saunders often stresses the importance of gaining experience in a small market like she did at KTVB News Group in Idaho, where she started as an overnight producer and after one year was appointed to the 4 p.m. producer role for the station’s flagship news program.

“If you want to do something, you just have to raise your hand. They want you to work more, and again, just like what I said with Eastern, you have to make your own opportunities,” she said.

“You have to make it known that you’re hungry for more experience and they’ll give it to you.”