Violeta Yas RC’07, is the newest member of NBC 4 New York’s Storm Team 4. She was recently the Chief Meteorologist for NBC10 Philadelphia\Telemundo62. She has been nominated for five Emmys, winning one. The following text has been edited for clarity and space; for the full interview see the video below.
Jordan Cohen: Are you excited to be utilizing the StormTracker 4 [Radar] located on the campus of Rutgers University?
Violeta Yas: Yes, I’m actually very excited. There are several ties there, the radar, obviously being one of them. I’m excited to be able to have a closer seat to the relationship that has played out between Rutgers and NBC. It seems like there’s a strong pipeline there.
You came to Rutgers in 2003. Are you from New Jersey originally?
Yes. I was born in Argentina and when I first moved to the States, we lived in Queens for a year or two before eventually settling in North Jersey. I grew up in Bergen County in Garfield. That’s where I did my elementary-high school. Then obviously, stayed in Jersey as well for college. I lived in New York for a couple of years after college before eventually getting into the business so I guess I’m a Jersey girl, New Yorker hybrid, I guess you can say.
What made you decide to go to Rutgers? Was it a specific program?
Honestly for me, it was a little more of a financial decision, being an immigrant and having to navigate the college entry process by myself. Obviously, my parents were very helpful, but they had never been through that process here. It was a lot of leg work on my own.
I did apply to a couple of other schools, but realistically speaking, once we really took a look at everything and sat down and looked at the tuition, and all of that, it was always going to be Rutgers. I honestly cannot say enough about the value of education. I do really feel that I was very prepared when I left school and went on my way.
I remember actually Steve Miller always talking to us about that, but I feel like it’s one of those things that it’s not really until you get older and are really starting to pay attention to those things a little more that you’re like, “Wow. Yes. I’m very happy with the education that I got and for the price as well.” Obviously, college is very expensive. I cannot even imagine having gone anywhere else, truthfully.
You’ve still been involved, correct? With the Institute for Women’s Leadership. I think you still guest lecture, correct?
Yes. I try to get back at least once a year, usually through Steve Miller or Bruce Reynolds, my former professors who I keep in touch with. I’ll try to get back typically, it would be for the media ethics course, and typically we’ll do that once a year. Obviously, COVID threw everything for a loop, like everything else. I’m really looking forward to getting back, hopefully this year or next.
The Women’s Leadership Program has been great too. It’s more structured mentorship. I really like mentoring. I do a lot of it– I don’t know, I guess informally, you could say. Steve Miller will reach out to me sometimes and say, “Hey, I have this student, I think he or she could really benefit from level guidance”, or maybe we have a lot in common, maybe they’re bilingual and he’ll connect us that way.
I do that a lot, but then the Women’s Leadership Program has been a nice way to keep things moving. I’ll get a new mentee every year. That’s been really great also just seeing that the progression in terms of what the graduates are interested in and the things that sparked their curiosity, sparked their interest, and what drive them. That’s been a really great way to not only stay connected to the University but also stay connected to the next generation and the direction that things are moving in.
Speaking of sparking interests, when you were at Rutgers, were there any clubs, or organizations, or causes that you took part in that were really meaningful to you or experiences that are still special to you now?
Violeta: Yes. When I was in school, I worked a ton, so in retrospect I didn’t get as involved in the extracurriculars as I would have liked. I never did RU-TV, which considering the path that my career took, I wish I would’ve had a chance to do that.
I was in the inaugural Rutgers Club Softball team. Oh, man, it was so much fun. I still keep in touch with a lot of those girls to this day. Actually, not that long ago, I think last year, I stumbled on the Rutgers Club Softball Instagram account, and it was just so awesome to see how people have really not only kept it going but also have seen to really have grown it quite a bit.
They’re participating in really great tournaments, doing fundraising and all that kind of stuff. That was really, awesome to see, that it’s not only still going, but still going strong and they’ve been able to elevate it over the years because we really got it out of the mud, I guess, in that way, when we were getting it started.
Think you could still take them on the diamond?
Violeta: [laughs] We’ve been talking for years about doing this alumni game-type thing. It first came up, I don’t know, 2018 or something like that. We haven’t been able to make it happen, but a lot of the girls that I played with are still relatively local, either in South Jersey or in New York. I’m hoping we can get that go. Can I take them? That’s a different story, but I would be happy to participate.
If anybody follows Violeta on Twitter, you’re very opinionated on sports. I think your early broadcasting is almost entirely sports-related. Was that like a lifelong interest? Tell us about it.
Violeta: When I was in school, I was one of those people who had a really hard time deciding what to major in. Now, you know there was a lot of people who, as soon as they get there, they know and my first two years were actually on Busch. As you know, it’s more the pharmacy students, engineering students. I was around a lot of people who were already from the second they got on campus planning on pursuing those programs or their parents are doctors or pharmacists.
It was very intimidating for me because I’m like, “Well, I don’t know.” I had a lot of interests at the time, it was just a challenge for me. Then once junior year came around and it was time to really– I was definitely one of, I think, later people who was able to settle in on a major. That’s really how I approached it. I said, “Well, what do I naturally gravitate toward?”
This is something that I share with a lot of the young professionals that I mentor as well. Especially those that are still in college. Try not to approach it in terms of, “Well, what do I want to do for the rest of my life?” That sounds insane, it just sounds so intimidating. It was something that I applied to myself and I told myself, “What do I naturally gravitate toward? What do I spend a lot of my natural time and my free time doing?” And it was always sports.
I was always checking the box score. Get the Targum and first thing I’m flipping to is the sports section. It’s always been an interest for me, I’ve always been really involved.
Initially, I wanted to be a sportswriter and actually did that for some time toward the end of my junior and senior year, then for one more year after I graduated. There was a flip obviously, eventually, that happened there. I got a really great opportunity in the weather space, but sports have always been a big passion of mine, and even working in weather, it’s been great because the two are also very intertwined. At my first job, we had a lot of sports clients. I would do the weather for the pregame show on the Big Ten Network. This was before Rutgers joined the Big Ten of course, that would’ve been awesome. We had a lot of Fox Sports clients in Atlanta, Fox Sports Atlanta. We did the Braves, Fox sports north, we did the Twins, and just a lot of the regional networks like that.
At AccuWeather it was great because I became the resident sports weather person. That’s been great, I think over the years, being able to have one foot in both arenas there and be able to tie the two together. I’m actually the commissioner of our fantasy football league here at work.
“It’s not always going to happen exactly as you planned it. It’s good to have a plan and you should have a plan, but leave a little room there for leaps of faith…”
You graduated 2007 with journalism media studies and you started working for AccuWeather in 2010. What made you decide to make the transition into weather forecasting and weather broadcasting?
This is going to sound very lame and cheesy, but one thing I always like to say is that I feel like weather found me. Obviously, we’re just talking about my background, which up through my time at Rutgers did not involve weather or meteorology. Sports was my focus at the time and when I graduated in 2007, I took an extra semester, so it was right after 2007 leading into the recession, the last recession.
This is when the market crisis, and it was essentially what’s been going on now in terms of employment and people losing jobs, or rather what had been going on for the last year or two, just without the virus. It was the same exact thing where here I am fresh out of college and I was living in New York at the time too, looking for my first job and I’m living in the number market in the country. I had a really, really hard time getting a job and it ended up taking me about two years.
I graduated, let’s say, between 2007, 2008. I didn’t end up going to AccuWeather until 2010. The story behind that is, I had never up until that point really considered utilizing my bilingualism as a career path or utilizing my ability to speak Spanish as a skillset in the workplace. When I decided to expand my search, because I was having such a difficulty finding a position, I came across an opportunity, at AccuWeather were looking for a bilingual broadcaster.
At the time it was something out of my wheelhouse, but I decided to go for it. Obviously, it ended up working out and the way it happened was when I was preparing for that job, I was looking online for other Spanish-speaking meteorologists that I could emulate and learn from and pick up words from, and I had a really hard time. They were very few Spanish-speaking weather presenters [who were] presenting weather in a credible way that had the science background and the degree.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of stereotypical things going on in terms of the weather presenters and the women in particular. That was what sparked it for me, and I said, “Oh my gosh, there’s a need here. There’s a lot of Spanish speakers in this country and it doesn’t seem like they’re really getting critical weather information in a serious way.” I was very lucky that AccuWeather was great about training me. I sat through a lot of seminars and internal training before I was even able to get on camera, before I started broadcasting. That was great to give me foundational knowledge.
Then, after a couple of years, when I got a call from Philadelphia about this Telemundo station they were launching, they wanted to bring me on, but it was contingent on, “You have to go back to school.” I said, “Absolutely.” I went back to school in 2017 and I studied meteorology [At Mississippi State University]. Everything happened backwards, but that’s another thing that I really try to convey to people who are new in the business. It’s not always going to happen exactly as you planned it. It’s good to have a plan and you should have a plan, but to leave a little room there for leaps of faith.
That makes a lot of sense. Is weather something you wish you had picked up earlier? Or do you feel like you appreciate it more because of how you got to it?
I don’t think I would change anything because I’ve been doing this for 12 years now. I have really found that obviously meteorology is at the heart of what I do. The weather information is very important, but this is also a communications field and how you communicate and your ability to communicate sometimes very complicate information is just as important, you could argue even more important.
You could have every degree in the world, but the atmosphere is complicated, weather can be complicated, and if you don’t have the ability to break that down in a way that a lot of people can understand, and in a way that a lot of people know what to do with that information when they need to act, and when they don’t necessarily need to act, then you’re not going to help a lot of people.
I think at Rutgers now, I don’t believe this was an option when I was there, but they offer a double major, journalism and meteorology. I don’t think that was a thing at the time, but I came across one student who was doing it and I said, “Man, it’s perfect”, because you really do need both. The science is important, but how you communicate the science is just as important. I don’t think I would change anything. I think the ability to communicate in a clear and easy-to-understand way is just as valuable.
You mentioned that you hadn’t considered using your bilingualism until you were looking for jobs in that tricky market. You also mentioned, and I’ve seen on your resume, that you like to do a lot of mentoring, and you had trouble finding people who you could follow the example of. Now you are the example of someone in your position with your skillset, with your background. Is that something that affects the way you handle yourself on camera, the way you handle the work you do? Is there something you’d like to be doing with that in the future?
I think that I absolutely do my best to use my platform in a way that helps people. I think, coming from somebody from my background, for example, I’m an immigrant. I’ve lived here since I was very young, but I think my immigration story is really at the center of a lot of the things I do, because I know what it’s like to have other people, let’s say by the time I start looking for internships, a lot of my peers already had four or five and I’m like, “Oh man, am I not as smart as everyone?” In retrospect, I think a lot of that stuff was just not having been through the process before.
I think exposing young people who maybe don’t have those kinds of resources or don’t have those kinds of connections, even having parents who’ve been in school in this country, it can really change people’s life. That’s how I try to go about it. ‘What is the information that I wish I knew at an earlier time’ and making sure that I share that information with as many people as possible. Like RU-TV; not having been involved in that stuff while I was in school, in retrospect, I think it was because it just wasn’t on my radar because I had to work and I had to help pay my tuition. I think exposing people who have less access to resources is something that I’m really passionate about and helping them along the way.
We talk to alumni about successes that they’re having. What’s often really revealing is, what’s an obstacle that you came against or mistake that you made, and how did you turn that around and overcome it and learn and grow from it?
I think this job and working on camera in particular, you are opening yourself up for criticism every day. We’re standing in front of a camera and delivering the weather and now with how much people use social media and how connected we all are, I find for me, that is one arena of the job that I work really hard to set boundaries with. It’s hard to please everyone. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ll get on the same day; sometimes it might be criticism about your appearance. Sometimes it might be criticism about something more legitimate about your work. ‘You always say it’s going to snow and then it doesn’t’, things like that. I think setting boundaries with that is something that I hadn’t really thought about when I got into the business and was something that you really actively have to be careful.
On the same day, there’s been times where I will get one message saying “You are wearing the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen in my life. Please throw it in the garbage.” Something like that. Then I will get another message that says, “I love that dress so much. Can you please let me know where you got it?” That’s a low hanging fruit example, but that just goes to show that you really can’t put too much stock in that kind of stuff. That’s been important for me as the digital space continues to grow in terms of local news and news in general. That’s been a lesson that I have had to learn and really self-regulate.
One way that as a woman I regulate that is, for example, if I post something on social media, if somebody leaves a comment about my appearance, even if it’s positive, “You look very pretty today.” Something like that, I don’t interact with it at all. I only interact with people who comment something about the weather or something about the forecast, a question about the forecast, because I just feel like that is how I want the people who engage with me on my platforms to understand that that’s not the thing that’s going to get my attention.
I think that was something that I didn’t think about getting into this, how much contact we would have with viewers over time and that boundary continues to erode because we’re just more and more available, there’s new platforms every day. I would say that was a little bit of a challenge, especially when I was younger. Maybe you don’t have the confidence that you do as you continue to navigate through your career, but that’s definitely a big takeaway. I would urge younger journalists to make sure they’re setting those boundaries.
Speaking of connecting with other journalists and younger alumni, but also connecting to your own network, how do you stay in touch with the folks, the alumni that you graduate with and your classmates? How do you keep those connections strong?
I find that a lot of the people that I went to school with are still relatively local and I think that is one of the benefits of working in such a major or having studied rather in such a major metro area, that there are lots of opportunities here. A lot of people don’t leave because they’re able to get great jobs and raise their families. I think New Jersey’s a great state. Most of them are relatively local and that certainly helps. Maurice Peebles is still one of my very good friends. We graduated together in 07, he’s from South Jersey and he’s been doing an awesome job. I think most recently the editor-in-chief at Complex he’s killing it, doing an awesome job.
There are just several others who are really doing awesome work. That makes it easy. I think Rutgers is just a special place. I think New Jersey is a special place and Rutgers is an enormous school and I think having navigated that together, I think creates a little more of a bond than people realize, until they leave.
Then also an added layer of that, New Jersey is just a special place and without knowing I think you develop a bond about that, that you don’t really realize it’s happening until you leave.
“I really feel that Rutgers prepared me very well for the real world, and that’s something that I’ve always been proud of….”
I do want to throw you a softball, which is, who’s your favorite Rutgers basketball player on this current team?
My God, this is rough. They’re all so great. Honestly, this is a totally splitting hairs because I really do think, not only on the court, they have a great team, but they all really seem to be just great guys. I have to go Geo Baker. The leadership that it takes to start that whole NIL movement in a serious way. I think that the conversation had been had many times and players, yes, have been vocal about it, but I think that he was really the first one to attack it in a more measured way. Like, “I’m going to testify.” I think he was really the one who stood up and tried to slay Goliath. I think that with his output on the court, I think that kind of leadership is just so absolutely contagious. Putting your neck out there and stuff like that translate onto the court, so they’re all really great, and Cliff is so fun to watch.
What are you most looking forward to heading over to NBC in New York?
I think I’ve been very lucky here in Philly. I’m not terribly far from my family as it is. They’re in Union County. They’re about 90 minutes away now and then once I move maybe 30, 45 minutes, but I would say honestly, being able to really give back to my community in a way that’s a little bit easier for me in terms of physical proximity. I do a lot of work here in Philly. There’s a lot of schools and things like that. I just have so many roots in the area, North Jersey and in New York too, that I’m looking forward to having more presence. Like I said before, showing people that it can be done. You can do this, even if maybe you’re starting a little further behind than everyone out else.
If you don’t have the resources, you don’t have the connections, it can be done. I think just being able to see people and be in the community more often physically, because I do feel I’ve tried my best to stay connected from afar, but being able to do that with more physical proximity, I actually I’m looking into, and I hope I’m able to make it happen, adjunct teaching in the comms department, I would love to do that so that’s something on my more short term radar that we’re hopefully going to be able to make happen here in the next year or so.
What is your biggest point of pride in Rutgers University?
I think not giving up. I think it goes back to the Rutgers New Jersey thing. I was explaining this to a friend. She’s new here at our station. She moved here from California. She moved here from Miami, but she’s from California. She went to USC and she’s new to the Northeast. She’s like, “Man, you have people here very– just like straightforward and just very direct” I’m like, “Yes, we are.” I was trying to explain it to her. I said, “I think it’s very crowded.” This area is very densely populated. It’s like everything is a competition.
If you’re going to the grocery store, you need to be on your game. If you want a parking spot, you need to pay attention and you need to be looking around and paying attention to your surroundings. Obviously, that’s a very small example, but I think stuff like that really translates to a lot of different areas. I really feel that Rutgers prepared me very well for the real world, and that’s something that I’ve always been proud of.
Even once I first started navigating the business, there were just things that didn’t surprise me that I learned through my time at school because we have some really great professors who teach you not only what you need to actually do the job, but also just on a personal level things that you’ll need to keep in mind in the future.
I just found even when I was still pretty young in the business myself, that there were several things that didn’t sort of surprise me or didn’t throw me for a loop that I saw other people struggle with. I think already having lived in, grown-up, and worked in an area that is so densely populated, you meet so many different kinds of people. I think that diversity, not only in terms of the sort of people you’re surrounded by but the diversity in experience, taking buses, taking trains and that sort of thing. I think that’s something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Once people get down to the root, you might move somewhere else, get a job somewhere else and you’re going to have to start taking trains. And I just think that that real-world experience that you get in New Brunswick is something that maybe, again, people don’t think about in the moment when you leave, it just prepares you, I think, a lot more on a personal level for some of the things you might encounter as you navigate your career.
Violeta, thank you so much for your time. Good luck, Congratulations again, and we look forward to knowing what the forecast is.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate you having me. It was great to meet you and yes, if you have any questions weather-wise, you can send them my way!
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA’s Young Alumni Committee is pleased to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys recent Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
Young Alumni Spotlight The RAA Young Alumni Committee would like to spotlight some of the fantastic journeys Rutgers graduates are taking as they enter the
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