Peter Jennings, former ABC World News Tonight anchor, was the speaker when Roxanna Sherwood, senior executive producer of original longform content at ABC News, graduated from prep school Choate Rosemary Hall.
Sherwood was class president and her speech, like Jennings’s, was about coming up from nothing and achieving dreams. She always felt compelled to tell human stories and wanted to be a writer, a journalist. “I didn’t envision myself in television,” Sherwood said, but Jennings reached out and they stayed in touch.
After an internship at NBC News, she followed up with Jennings and got an interview to be a desk assistant at ABC News. She started her career there, running through the building dropping off scripts.
Sherwood later joined ABC News’s longform group, which was doing groundbreaking work with you-are-there specials like Hopkins 24/7. She eventually coproduced NYPD 24/7.
Helped Revamp ‘Nightline’
After Ted Koppel left ABC, Sherwood was part of the team that reimagined signature late-night news program Nightline. Nightline anchor Juju Chang remembers Sherwood hanging off the back of a Jeep with a camera as they traveled across Mozambique to cover infant mortality in Africa.
Sherwood would become executive producer of Nightline. “I would say she is fearless. She is unafraid to ask tough questions, unafraid to take on tough assignments and unafraid to swing for the fences,” Chang said. “She’s a producer’s producer. Even though she’s an executive, she’s still so hands-on. We know we can drill as deeply as we want into any subject and know she has our back.”
Anchor Michael Strahan remembered when Sherwood became executive producer of Good Morning America. “It takes a lot to run a busy and crazy show like GMA,” he said. “I learned so much from her simply taking the time to let me know why and how things work.”
Do we have the ability to make a cultural impact with the story? … If the answer to that is yes, I’m going to throw myself into it.”
— Roxanna Sherwood
She also helped the former pro football star find his voice on the show. “She was great when it came to doing interviews that were outside of my comfort zone,” Strahan said. “Knowing that the boss trusted me to do things that I didn’t necessarily see myself doing gave me a whole different level of confidence.”
Sherwood and Karin Weinberg were producers together at Nightline. Sherwood soon became Weinberg’s boss and a mentor. “She really helped me become a senior producer,” Weinberg recalled. “She just kept pushing me. ‘I think you can do that,’ she would say. I learned so much from her. I think a lot of women would say the same thing.”
Under Sherwood, Nightline had more women senior producers than it ever had before. Sherwood said promoting women happened naturally on her watch. “There were so many talented women,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about being seen and heard and making sure everybody’s getting a fair shake.”
Now Sherwood is spearheading ABC News efforts to support The Walt Disney Co.’s streaming business, providing longform content for Hulu. That’s where Sherwood’s series Mike Tyson: The Knockout and 24 Hours: Assault on the Capitol can be found.
An Impactful Storyteller
“Not everyone is cinematic in their thinking,” said Alan Ives, senior VP of marketing at ABC News. “Rox would never serve vanilla ice cream.” Sherwood still rolls up her sleeves and pulls all-nighters to get shows like Assault on the Capitol on the air, Ives said.
“Do we have the ability to make a cultural impact with the story? Move this conversation forward?” Sherwood said. “If the answer to that is yes, I’m going to throw myself into it.”
Sherwood’s colleagues say her drive is all the more remarkable as a single mother. Of course, that’s a great story. Sherwood married a man from Costa Rica. She returned from their honeymoon, but he had been in the U.S. on an expired visa and was held by immigration. She discovered she was pregnant and he didn’t get a new visa for eight years. She had to raise their son on her own.
How did she manage? “I’m a producer. I set things up. I EPed our life,” Sherwood said. She worked long hours. “I think my son definitely suffered for that,” she said. But he also got to watch her set an example of succeeding through hard work. “He can say, ‘Look at my mom. She’s the boss.’ ” ■
