Our Latinx MBA summit attendees are still talking about their insightful and empowering experiences, not to mention one of the biggest hits - Ashley Lisseth Hernandez. The Pepperdine MBA alum held the audience captive as she delivered insightful career anecdotes from her experience as an Emmy-winning journalist and overall media maven. We just had to hear more about what got her here, and where she’s going next.

 

You were on a panel about the non-traditional routes to an MBA. For those who missed it, what motivates a journalist to pursue an MBA?

 

I’m absolutely not a timid person; yet sometimes, when I was assigned a complicated business story for CBS News, I would feel intimidated, and I very much disliked that feeling. Then, during the pandemic, travel for my work as a national news producer came to an abrupt halt. My company has a generous tuition assistance program, and Pepperdine even offers tuition discounts to corporate partners. I decided to do something about it because as a producer, I need to be ready to take on anything thrown at me.

 

And you were still working full-time?

 

Yes, I became extremely skilled at reprioritizing and pivoting. Once I joined an online class while at the Reno airport baggage claim while covering the Caldor fire evacuations nearby. After class, I packed up and went straight into the evacuation zone to meet my camera crew.

 

Post-MBA, what do your days as a journalist look like?

 

The connections I made launched me into a completely different orbit at work. The confidence I gained from being able to digest our quarterly earnings report and being aware of the company’s trajectory granted me an audience with the heads of CBS News. I shared my insights and developed a nice relationship. Before the MBA, I would have been too intimidated. I started approaching my work differently as well; I would treat my story pitches like case studies. This way I had a great character-driven story reaching our target demographics nationally, the data to forecast its success on social media and the web, while getting replays on our local affiliate stations. The more replays a national story gets on a local station, the less the station has to spend on creating its own content to fill its newscasts. This is important because they have smaller budgets and fewer resources. That also increases the likelihood that those viewers, if not already watching CBS News programming, would be intrigued to tune in to watch our other content.

 

Apparently, there’s a lot more to news than some may assume.

 

Absolutely, and with television networks and technology companies all trying to form, navigate, and even predict the future of our media landscape, there are so many more opportunities emerging to be able to reach viewers.

 

Armed with decades of media and newsroom experience plus an MBA, what are you most looking forward to?

 

Every media executive is strategizing how to pivot legacy media from broadcast TV to their own streaming platform after a Nielsen report came out showing that more people watch Youtube on their TV than traditional TV and cable combined. So YouTube isn’t just winning the streaming wars, it’s beating everyone with its largest group of viewers coming from the coveted 18 to 34 age range. 

As the race for streaming viewers heats up, it’s important to note that the largest demographic with the capacity for exponential growth in media is Latinos. They are the largest consumers of streaming media and the fastest-growing community in the nation, with 1 in 5 American adults being Latino. When you look at the number of Latinos under 18, it’s 1 in 4. And in 2024, nearly a third of all babies born were Latino. That information can be very lucrative for a media executive strategizing their audience growth over the next 20 years. The data is there, I’m just interested in helping companies act on it.

 

It sounds like you’re already working on a plan for that.

 

I am. My skills as a journalist allow me to spot trends and changes in our culture, and my MBA helps me translate all the data into actionable strategies. I think that is what allows me to be successful at any job. I can take massive amounts of complex data and distill it into digestible storylines, or I can use my own anecdotal findings as the basis for market research and expand that to take a wider look at its effects and forecast to see what this will mean for our current strategy, whether we need to pivot, and what to expect decades down the line. 

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Ashley Lisseth continues to partner with executives and organizations at the intersection of media, technology, and culture. She welcomes opportunities to collaborate on corporate communications and brand strategy initiatives that elevate storytelling, strengthen audience engagement, and position organizations for long-term growth and impact.

Readers can connect with Ashley Lisseth on LinkedIn or reach her at ashley.hernandez@latinxmba.org.

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