Candid Conversation with Jamie Hersch

"I talk about sports but that does not define me." Her Instagram bio lets you know right away Jamie Hersch is so much more than what you see on TV. Scroll through her photos and you'll see a larger than life smile, a lot of Minnesota love, and the newest addition to her family, her son Brooks.
She's a woman I've long looked up to for being so transparent with her personal life and choosing to share so much of her personality with the viewers. Hoping to be a mom one day, the balance she's created is inspiring. She'll be celebrating international women's day in-studio during the all female edition of NHL on the Fly, and spoke about the importance and excitement of the day.

Carrlyn:
Monday, the all-female broadcast, I love when this happens. Right? It's great to celebrate all of the women that work at the network, to have guests coming through. It's such a cool moment and a cool day. From your perspective, what's the sense of excitement around it for you, and how much do you get out of a day like that? How much does that kind of energize your creativity as a woman in this world?

Jamie:
I think that's a great way to put it. It does energize me and my creativity, and my inspiration, mostly. Because to just have one day where we just happen to all be women talking about hockey, and still doing a really high-quality show where we have breakdowns and we have expert analysis, and we have our own thoughts and we're not just hosts teeing up a question to the so-called experts ... But we also get to kind of have a voice as hosts this day, and Jackie and I will really get to go back and forth and share our thoughts about the current state of play, and the weekend's games. Since it's on a Monday, we'll be talking a lot about the games that were, and then the games that are to come later Monday night.

Again, it's something that has been really intentional on our part to make it just like a normal NHL now would be, but just do it with women. Because we don't want to make this all about ... It is a celebration of women in sports, and specifically hockey, but it's also just pointing out that we can do a normal show. We can fill the roles that are typically occupied by men, and have it be just as good of a hockey show. So, that has only grown in the four years that we've done this.

Kendall Coyne Schofield is going to be our analyst remotely. She was with us two years ago as well, and she's fantastic. Now she's expanded her resume to work with the Blackhawks in more of a development role with the players. So, it's going to be really great to hear her insights, and also her experience playing in this whole Secret Dream Tour that they're doing right now with the PWHPA. So, there's just so many elements to this show every year that keep making it bigger and better, and I think what Jackie and I have kind of both said over the years is real progress will be when we don't have to make a special day all about women. It'll just be the norm that you turn on your TV and see women talking hockey on the regular.

Carrlyn:
Having this role that you have, and being a part of the process to make days like this so normal that no one needs to announce that, how does that make you feel knowing you're a trailblazer in that sense? You are basically knocking down the door for the women behind you to come through and have an easier experience when they grow up. Does that resonate with you at all? Do you ever think about that?

Jamie:
I guess I do a little, but I really just feel lucky to be in the position where I can even be viewed a little bit as that, because I certainly have my own role models that I remember watching growing up. Michelle Tafoya stands out as the big one that I watched doing Monday Night Football at the time, thinking, "Wow, she really knows her stuff. She really asks good questions," and, "She must not have played football, but man, she knows what she's talking about."

We say it so often that it is kind of cliche, "If you can see it, you can be it," but that has totally resonated with me, and I get messages from parents or little girls themselves all the time, or seeing them at all-star games or Stanley Cup games and they say, "My daughter wants to be just like you," and that warms my heart. Because that's what it's all about, is encouraging little girls to chase their dreams, and even if that means being a voice in the hockey community, they can do that, too.

Same with little boys. I think it's a really important thing to normalize it for little boys that women can just as equally talk about hockey. I say this all the time, but I have a two-year-old son, he's almost two, and he will grow up going to mom with questions about sports. There's just no question, because that's how it is in our household. My husband is a sports fan, but he's a casual sports fan, and I'm still explaining certain things to him about either hockey or baseball or whatever it might be. So, our son will grow up just assuming that women know more about sports in some ways than men, which is awesome.

Carrlyn:
Talking about being a mom, you're not just a role model to other young children who are growing up and looking at your career thinking, "Hey, I want to do that one day." You're a role model to other women like myself in this business, where you juggled a pregnancy, you grew a human inside of your stomach and did a job at the same time, like the one that you've got. That is so admirable, and now balancing mom life and studio life, what does that look like? And how was your experience going through that and getting to where you are now?

Jamie:
It's been a challenge, but every working parent would say the same thing. I just feel really lucky that I work at a place where they have something like a paid maternity leave. Still not a lot of places have as good of a program as they should, and I'm lucky to have a supportive partner whose job also has a parental leave. That's not just a maternity leave or a paternity, but he got actually more time to spend with our baby at first than I did. That's because his company has a 16-week policy, which was amazing. So, I think the more we can encourage companies in the corporate level to do that, that's a really big thing. But otherwise, it's just been really nice to be able to balance both.

I have so much respect for full-time moms. Because of COVID, I was a full-time mom from mid-March until about July last year. I was like, "This is amazing, but this has never been my dream." I just have so much respect for people who do do that, because I think it's the hardest job in the world. So for me, going to work is a privilege, and a chance for me to have my own identity besides just being a mom and full-time meal planning and things like that. I feel really lucky to be able to balance all of that.
I'm actually expecting my second right now, too, so that will be another wrinkle on Monday's show, is there's a little baby bump that you'll probably be able to see. I feel bad for the second kid already, because it's just so different the second time around, where I have just been so busy and preoccupied with my first and with work that I'm like, "Oh, I haven't even taken a cute picture to announce the ... " I'm halfway through, I'm due in July, and I'm still like, "I should probably tell people."

I still think that as women, for now, we still battle this notion that we got our job because of our looks, and that's an unfortunate assumption a lot of people still make. But with that comes a responsibility to continue to prove that you know what you're talking about. So for me, preparation has always been such a big part of my job and my identity. So I would just encourage whoever is out there, male or female, to be the most prepared person in the room, whether you're a reporter or hosting a studio show or whatever the sport may be.
I actually didn't know as much about hockey as you might think when I first started in hockey eight, nine years ago. I had to learn a lot, and it was through a lot of studying and asking questions to analysts behind the scenes, that I kind of had to fake it until I made it. Now it's my livelihood. I love hockey. I feel like I can hold my own in any conversation about hockey. But that came through years of preparation and studying, and just trying to be the best that I could be because I have that responsibility, I think, to maintain that credibility as a woman in sports.

Watch Jamie, Lauren Gardner, Jackie Redmond and Kendall Coyne Schofield co-host the fourth annual all-female production beginning today at 1 pm.