Alexandra Jewett

Forced by her German mother to study abroad and learn the language, Alexandra Jewett didn’t have much of a choice, but it ended of being one of her greatest experiences and opened up numerous opportunities as a result. After the CIA showed interest in her after college graduation, she took what she believed was a safer route and returned home to Washington, D.C. to instead take a job in television production. She soon moved to NYC to work on The Phil Donahue Show, which won several Daytime Emmys during her tenure, and was eventually tasked with launching American-style daytime talk shows internationally. The skills she learned abroad proved instrumental as she successfully launched shows in Germany, France, Holland, England, Israel, and Malaysia. Three children later, she easily stepped into launching and executive producing shows back in the U.S. Today, Alexandra runs programming and development for Debmar-Mercury, a leading television production, syndication, and distribution company, overseeing shows such as The Wendy Williams Show and Celebrity Name Game with Craig Ferguson. Nominated for several Daytime Emmys herself, Alexandra remains extremely grateful for her year abroad and is forcing her daughters to study abroad in college, too.

IES Abroad: What motivated you to study abroad and why did you choose the program in Freiburg?

Alexandra Jewett: I wasn’t so much motivated to study abroad. I was forced by my parents, and it turned out to be one of the best gifts they gave me. My mother is German. She was born in Nuremburg. German was not offered in my high school, so I didn’t start studying German until college at Vassar. It wasn’t going well. It was dragging down my GPA quite a bit. My mother decided that I really needed to go spend a full year in Germany studying the language and continuing my studies, which was the last thing I wanted to do. She was quite high on Freiburg because it was a beautiful university town, and she knew it well. She was the driving force. I don’t know if they even offered a semester program. None of my friends were studying abroad for a full year. I had some of my high school friends at other colleges that were doing a semester in Rome or a semester in England.  It really was a life changing experience. Just in terms of understanding the culture and learning the language, and not to sound trite, but in finding myself and understanding who I was in a lot more meaningful way than I think I would have staying at Vassar for that year.

IES Abroad: Did you have an 'ah ha' moment while you were in Europe that critically changed the way you think?

AJ: I went the summer before, and then I stayed through the following summer, so I was there for 15 months.  And again, not by choice. I was really alone. I had no friends, no family in Freiburg. I became friends with the other Americans who were studying in Freiburg, and they were unlike any friends I had ever made in high school or college. We didn’t have any cell phones, and it was always snowing in Freiburg. I would have to trudge through the snow to the pay phone to put the coins in to reach my family or friends. I remember feeling very lonely and sort of not in control of my life, and in the beginning I really wanted to come home. But by the time I left, I had the opportunity to travel to so many different places and countries and meet so many people that I would have never opened myself up to meet. I came back a changed person, changed for the better.

I think maybe my “ah ha” moment came after I came back home for my senior year. That was when I felt this enormous gratitude that I had gone and done that, had the experiences, and had in that one year seen so much of the world, met so many interesting people, and learned things that I never would have been able to learn in my classrooms and about myself and about the world. And I also came back speaking German fluently, which ended up being a real gift to me in my career, especially in the early part of my career.

IES Abroad: How did studying in Freiburg impact your career, particularly early on as you started your career in television?

AJ: I was a political science major and international relations minor in college, and I studied international relations in Freiburg. When I came back, the CIA was showing an enormous interest in me, which was an interesting twist. It was this sort of entry level job but I had to commit to living abroad for three years, and the pay was really good. I don’t know that I even considered it seriously. The thought of it terrified me. It was during the Cold War, and what I imagined I would be doing, no real facts, but my imagination got the better of me. But there was real interest in me because I spoke fluent German, I had spent a good deal of time in Europe, and I was able to assimilate well into another culture. When I graduated from college and moved to Washington D.C., like most graduates, I couldn’t find a job. So I ended up, by default, taking an available job in television production, something I knew nothing about. Early on in my career, I was a producer on The Phil Donahue Show in New York City, and my husband took a job in Albany. I had to quit my job, which I loved, and the chairman of the company that owned and produced Donahue asked if I spoke any other languages. Freiburg is very close to France, and I had taken French in high school, so I said, “Yes, I speak German and French,” and he said, “Great, let’s go start American-style talk shows in international territories. We’ll start with Germany.” And I went to Germany and launched the first of three shows we did in there, including two extremely successful daytime talk shows, one called Fliege and another called Vera am Mittag.

IES Abroad: What skills in particular helped you launch daytime television shows in international territories?

AJ: I went over and I tried to understand not only the landscape of daytime television, but even more importantly, the culture and habits of the country, so I could figure out what kind of show would work. Then I would begin the process of finding and recruiting talent, a production partner, etc. etc.  We launched the first one in Germany, then went on to launch shows in France, Holland, England, Israel, and Malaysia. We launched a number of really successful shows in international territories. We had U.S. competitors, but I think I really had an advantage because I knew how to walk into a foreign territory and very quickly assimilate and very quickly have enormous respect for their culture, their values, and work with the team, a local team there, to create something that would work for them and their audience. I eventually had three children, and I was spending 18 days a month abroad, and it just became too difficult. I decided I really needed to focus on working here in America, not traveling. Because I had launched almost a dozen television shows, it was a big stepping stone, and I was able to step right into launching and executive producing shows in the U.S. 

IES Abroad: Tell us about your work today at Debmar-Mercury. What gets you up in the morning and excites you the most?

AJ: I run programming and development for Debmar-Mercury, a production, syndication, and distribution television company. We have multiple formats on the air, from talk shows to game shows to sitcoms. The company is partly owned by Lions Gate. I oversee the current programming that we have on the air as well as develop new programming, new shows for syndication. Right now, we produce The Wendy Williams Show. We have a game show called Celebrity Name Game with Craig Ferguson. We distribute Family Feud. We have Anger Management with Charlie Sheen in syndication. We have a lot of shows from game shows to talk shows in the development pipeline as well as continuing to develop scripted. At the end of every day, no matter how difficult of a day I’ve had, I feel like I had a more interesting day than most people. You’re telling stories, you’re working with talent, and you’re meeting people that you would never ever get to meet or talk to if it weren’t for your job. Because I spoke a couple of other languages, I was chosen early on in my career to travel a lot and now 25+ years I have traveled to most parts of the world – Russia, Malaysia, Israel, and throughout Europe – for work, and that has been extraordinary. I feel enormous gratitude that I’ve gotten to go so many places, meet so many people, and work together with so many different people. I just can’t imagine what other job I would have had that would have allowed me to do that.

IES Abroad: You have been nominated for a Daytime Emmy several times and many of the programs you have worked on has won prestigious awards. What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?

AJ: For many, many years I was a daytime talk show producer and executive producer. A dozen of those, I certainly helped create and launch. But creating and launching daytime talk shows in foreign territories successfully is probably one of my greatest accomplishments. It was a herculean task, and I would have never ever been able to do it successfully or do it well if I hadn’t spent a year studying and living and working abroad. No way would I have been able to feel confident, feel comfortable, be open enough, understand that I was the stranger in the land and needed to assimilate. Because I may know how to launch a TV show, but that doesn’t mean I know how to launch a TV show in France or in Italy or in Malaysia. So, for me, that is what I am most proud of.

IES Abroad: Are there lessons you learned in Freiburg that have remained a constant throughout your career?

AJ: I think one big lesson for me was that you can’t control everything. I was used to having much more control over my life. I was young, I had gone through high school and two years of college, but I was able to control who I hung out with, my schedule, what classes I wanted to take, what I wanted to do with my free time. Moving to Germany with no cell phone, not speaking the language, and knowing nobody and knowing that I was going to be there for 15 months, I had to figure it all out. I remember feeling very out of control and feeling very lonely at times, but I also remember coming home and feeling enormous pride that I had done the year well and had much more self-confidence than I even knew was possible. I had incredible gratitude for the experiences that I had, the places that I had been able to go, the people that I had been able to get to know, and I had a stronger sense of who I was and how I wanted to live my life. I didn’t have control over a lot of it. A lot of it I just had to accept, and that wasn’t something I was all that used to. I have looked back on that experience a lot over my life when things feel a little out of control. You just have to put one step in front of the other, and your attitude is going to determine what kind of a day you have. So, just have a good attitude and move forward. I think that is one lesson I learned from studying abroad.

IES Abroad: In what ways do you stress the importance of studying abroad to your own children?

AJ: With my own three daughters, my line has always been: I will not pay one penny of college unless you commit to study abroad. Two of the three have already gone off and studied abroad and have come back a changed person for the better – more mature, more empathetic, a deeper understanding of themselves and what their capabilities are, a willingness to be open to other people and cultures. It may have taken them much longer to figure out how important it is to embrace curiosity, to know how to adapt, to make an effort to try to fit in to disparate cultures and places, and to embrace things that feel and seem foreign to you, rather than turn away. They know how important an experience it was for me because I’ve talked about it always. Just to go and live on your own in a place that is so unfamiliar and really try to embrace that experience, though maybe lonely at times or sometimes too far from the comforts of home, I don’t know many people that ever regretted doing it. In fact, it is the opposite. When else in your life can you go and live in some totally new land for six months at a time? Once you graduate from college, you get on that hamster wheel pretty quickly, and it is hard to find a job that will even give you two weeks off. The opportunities for travel and the opportunities to sit in a café and talk to somebody who you would never ever have the opportunity to meet in your lifetime are just extraordinary.

My advice: don’t go over there and immediately find the other Americans and only hang out with them because that you can do anytime. This is quite possibly the only time in your life you will ever have the opportunity to go live in a different country and really try to understand that place and the culture and the people. When else do you have the opportunity to do that? Go study abroad if at all possible. And once you get there…soak it all in, and do your best to fit in. It will enrich your life in ways you can’t imagine. And you will have extraordinary memories for a lifetime.