ALISHA’S MEDIA EXPERIENCE

Alisha Ludwick is a leader, intrapreneur and industry innovator with 20 years of experience in national, international, local, digital and broadcast operations.

Since joining the industry in 2001, Alisha fine-tuned her natural organizational skills, crafting workflow and operations protocols for teams from five to 50-plus. With a deep understanding of planning, logistics and most-importantly – proactive communication, she has developed a strong sense of how to quickly and efficiently get things done. She understands the importance of understanding the stakeholders involved, and their business needs, as the entire team moves toward a goal. 

Alisha has been a proud member of a number of high-profile media organizations, perhaps and most notably Scripps News (formerly Newsy). She joined Newsy and the E.W. Scripps Company in June 2017 from CBS News in New York. One month later, she led a team of journalists to launch “The Why,” Newsy’s first live news program. The two-hour news magazine launched July 24, 2017, hosted out of the Scripps Washington Bureau with co-hosting and control room operations based out of Newsy’s Chicago Bureau. Master Control operations are based in Indianapolis.

Shortly after Alisha joined Newsy, the E.W. Scripps Company announced the acquisition of a cable channel and plans to launch Newsy as a national news network. The network went live in October 2017 and became available in nearly 40 million homes nationwide.

By October 2017, Alisha led a team to develop and launch six additional hours of daily, unique programming across the news network, leading teams of producers based in Chicago, Columbia, Missouri, Denver, and Washington, D.C.

Following its launch, Alisha oversaw the development of 14 hours of hosted news programming, and several hours of special programming developed in partnership with Intelligence Squared U.S., Kaiser Health News, PolitiFact, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, and Smart Cities New York. Additionally, she has worked with partners to develop content for news programming including The Marshall Project, Politico, Chicago Ideas, Narratively, Complex, Coda Story, The Moth, and Inverse.

In March 2020, as the world responded to the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alisha was part of Newsy’s team of news managers that relocated an entire live operations unit into remote production. From line producers, hosts and all the way to master control operations, in a matter of just four days, the entire company moved into remote production without losing a single newscast. 

Throughout the pandemic, Alisha led a team of nearly 50 live operations colleagues through two impeachment trials, launched the company’s first extended live coverage of a historic presidential election, navigated coverage of the national unrest in response to the death of George Floyd with solutions-focused reporting in the demands for racial equality, virtual national political conventions and debates. As election day neared, planning pivoted to cover the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and the hospitalization of former President Donald Trump following his diagnosis of COVID-19. In November, the live operations team went wall-to-wall to cover the historic presidential election and resulting questioning of the validity of the outcome. But it was her team’s work as they navigated the January 6th Insurrection on the U.S. Capitol that makes her most proud. She proudly watched as her team carefully covered that moment in history with a calm, educated delivery to the consumer. 

Alisha oversaw Newsy’s coverage of countless live news events, including the network's first extended coverage of the State of the Union, the Women’s March, the March for Our Lives, the President Trump-Kim Jong Un summit, and memorial services honoring the late Senator John McCain and President George H.W. Bush.

In January 2019, after more than a year of work, Newsy’s 23,000-square-foot production facility opened in the heart of downtown Chicago. Alisha was part of a senior leadership team tasked with the design implementation of the facility, now home to three state-of-the-art studios and two industry-competitive control rooms. 

In April 2019, Alisha was honored to be included in Cablefax People Awards 2019 “People to Watch.”

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As a senior manager overseeing CBSN primetime and west coast programming, Alisha led the streaming network's extensive coverage of the 2016 presidential election cycle.  Under her team’s leadership, the digital network saw record-setting growth quarter after quarter. Starting with the presidential debates, through the primaries and up to Election Day 2016, CBSN’s coverage gained continuous praise from industry leaders. By the time the votes were counted and the polls were closed, CBSN drew in a record 19.1 million streams.

As the world has seen over and over again, there remains a need for news coverage without technical borders. Viewers arrive and return to CBSN every hour from all over the world. Alisha’s efforts, with her network’s support, ensured viewers CBSN remains a place to be informed on news happening from around the world.

Alisha worked daily to increase the story count on issues impacting CBSN’s viewers and their communities. Alisha led the control room operations for more than 12 hours as the massacre in Paris unfolded. Her team was first on air in the initial moments of the ambush on officers in Dallas. She led special programming initiatives to bring light to the Zika crisis and race relations in America.

During her time with CBSN, Alisha gained incredible experience transitioning her skills from broadcast to digital operations. She is highly-versed in the importance of both industries and how to merge the two to deliver timely information to active news consumers.

Alisha has invaluable experience in high-stress situations, is a forward-thinker operating months in advance, is gifted with a calm management style and is dedicated to improving every facet of standards and operations.