For Robyn Walters, SOC/BA ’21, moving from Syracuse, New York, to Washington, DC, was never a matter of if. It was always when. 

She fell in love with the District during a trip in fifth grade. Years later, when she toured American University as a high school junior, she stepped onto campus and immediately knew she had found the place where she wanted to be. 

For Walters, choosing AU was about more than choosing a college. She was choosing a place to begin the career she had already started imagining for herself: one in news, surrounded by the people, institutions, and stories shaping the world around her. 

“I still remember the exact moment I stepped on campus,” Walters says. “Instantly, I knew I wanted to go to AU.” 

As a journalism major in AU’s School of Communication, Walters built on the experience she had gained in high school, where she worked at her school’s television station and co-anchored broadcasts with her brother. 

At AU, she joined American Television (ATV), the University’s student-run television station, putting what she learned in the classroom into practice and gaining experience in the fast-paced world of broadcast news. 

But even her traditional classes often felt like an extension of the newsroom. 

“One of the things I loved most about AU was the fact that so many of my professors—their day jobs were in newsrooms,” she says. 

One of her professors worked for the investigative unit at The Washington Post. Walters and her classmates also toured the newsrooms at National Public Radio and National Geographic, getting an up-close look at the industry she hoped to join. 

For Walters, DC wasn’t simply the backdrop to her education. It was part of the education itself. 

And that experience helped propel her into her career. 

Just weeks after receiving her AU diploma in 2021, Walters began working at a television station in Maryland. For three years, she worked the overnight shift, arriving at the station at 11 p.m. to begin her workday. 

The experience gave her a strong foundation in the fast-paced world of broadcast news, but Walters knew she wanted to return to the kind of breaking-news environment that had first drawn her to journalism. 

She didn’t have to look far. 

WUSA9, the CBS affiliate serving the Washington area, is located just around the corner from AU. 

“I knew it was an amazing fit for me,” Walters says. 

Today, Walters works as a news producer at WUSA9, where she describes her role as the “mastermind” of the broadcast. 

Her day begins before she ever walks into the station. When she wakes up at 7 p.m. for her 11 p.m. call time at the station, she checks a flood of news alerts to catch up on everything that happened while she was asleep. From there, she determines which stories will make the broadcast, writes scripts, selects video, and helps shape how viewers will experience the news. 

“I probably write 60 stories a night,” she says. “I pick out the video, I pick out how the viewer is going to see it.” 

Then she heads into the booth, where she works from 5 to 7 a.m. 

It is a demanding schedule, but it is also exactly the kind of work Walters wanted. 

“I never know what I’m going to walk into, and I love that,” she says. “I personally find the thrill of waking up and seeing what happened in the day.” 

That unpredictability is especially prevalent in Washington, where local news is often intertwined with national and international events. 

“Although we’re a local station, almost every national story, international story, has some sort of DC tie between the White House and Capitol Hill,” Walters says. “Almost anything that happens in the world, we can find a DMV angle to it.” 

That proximity to major news has given Walters a front-row seat to some of the biggest stories of her career. It also placed her in the newsroom on one of the most devastating days the region has experienced in recent years. 

On January 29, 2025, a commercial airplane and a U.S. Army helicopter collided over the Potomac River, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircrafts. 

Walters remembers waking up to the news. 

“I still remember every single moment of that night, waking up, hearing that there was a deadly collision,” she says. “I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to cover this because this is so devastating.’” 

The tragedy hit close to home. The victims included children, families, and members of the local community. 

But when Walters arrived at work, she had a job to do. 

“I put on my news hat and got right to work,” she says. “It was stressful, and it was hard. But we needed to focus, beyond the tragedy, on the lives impacted.” 

For Walters, the experience underscored why she had chosen journalism in the first place. The stories may be difficult, but telling them well matters. 

“I really love stories that have the ability to make an impact,” she says. 

WUSA9’s coverage of the collision ultimately earned the station an Emmy Award, giving Walters a milestone she had long hoped to reach. 

“I go into every show with the mindset that it can be an Emmy show,” she says. “And now that I’ve actually achieved that goal, it’s just amazing.” 

But for Walters, the award is inseparable from the people at the center of the story. 

“I dedicate the award to the victims,” she says. 

Five years into her professional career, Walters has already established herself as an Emmy-winning producer. But she isn’t looking at the milestone as a finish line. 

Her sights are already set on her next newsroom. 

New York City has long been the next destination in her mind, with dreams of working for one of the country’s most recognizable morning programs. 

“My dream job is the Today Show or Good Morning America,” she says. 

It would mean leaving the city that launched her career, but Walters has never been one to stay still for long. 

She came to Washington knowing she wanted to work in news. At AU, she found the education and hands-on experiences that helped prepare her for the newsroom. In DC, she found a city where the news was happening all around her, and eventually, a place at WUSA9 where she could help tell those stories herself. 

Now, she is ready to see where the next story takes her. 

“I’ll probably miss the days where I can go to my college McDonald’s right next to the [WUSA9] station,” Walters says. “But I do hope to be in New York, living my dreams.”