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Jen Maxfield          

Emmy Award-Winning Reporter; Columbia University Professor; Author of "More After the Break"

Jen Maxfield is an Emmy-award winning reporter and anchor who started at NBC New York in 2013. She also worked for Eyewitness News in New York as a reporter for ten years. Before joining WABC in 2002, she worked for WIXT in Syracuse, NY and WIVT in Binghamton, NY as an anchor and reporter.

Maxfield is an Adjunct Professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches broadcast journalism. She received a B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in political science from Columbia College in 1999 and an MS from the School of Journalism in 2000. Maxfield’s first book, "More After the Break: A Reporter Returns to Ten Unforgettable News Stories" was published by Greenleaf Book Group in July of 2022. Maxfield revisits the most memorable stories she has covered during her two-decade career, describing in heart-pounding detail how the events unfolded through the eyewitness perspectives and her own. Returning to the families years-- even decades-- after their stories were featured on the news gives Maxfield an opportunity to ask the burning question she had always pondered: 'what happened after the live truck pulled away?'

Throughout her career in TV news, Maxfield has reported live from news events in New York City and beyond. She was on the ground during Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and reported live from Florida after Hurricane Francis and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. She was at the State Capitol in Trenton when Governor Jim McGreevey resigned, covered the 2004 Republican convention in New York City, and was reporting live from a bar in Newark, New Jersey when President Barack Obama won his second term in 2016. She interviewed survivors following the “Miracle on the Hudson” plane landing and was part of NBC NY’s coverage of the 2016 NYC/NJ terror attacks.

She won a local news Emmy in 2018 for her live coverage of a plane crash in Teterboro, New Jersey. Her anchoring and reporting were part of NBC-NY’s COVID 19 coverage that was awarded the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Award in 2021, recognized as the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Maxfield has had the opportunity to meet tens of thousands of people covering news events over a wide range of topics, including politics, schools, criminal justice, health, business, weather, and human interest stories.

Maxfield began her career in journalism as an undergraduate student at Columbia College, where she wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator. She started an internship at CNN at the United Nations her sophomore year and promptly changed her career goal from sports medicine physician to journalist. She and her husband Scott live in New Jersey with their three children and their dog, Rocket.

Speech Topics


My Chosen Path

Converting to Judaism at Age 30 and What I Discovered About Forgiveness, Grace, and What Exactly is Gefilte Fish?

Most Likely to Succeed

How an 8th Grade Yearbook Award Inspired Me to Chase My Dreams and What it Tells Us About Motivating Girls to Aim Higher

Look at Me, Not at the Camera

A TV News Reporter Who Has Interviewed More Than Ten-Thousand People on Camera Offers Communication Tips

Human Being First, Journalist Second

How Returning to Ten Impactful News Stories Became the Most Rewarding Experience of My Broadcast Career

How Does She Do It?

Raising Three Kids While Working Two Jobs (and Writing a Book!)

Propelled by Rejection

How Getting Rejected From College, Ignored by News Directors, and Ghosted by Agents Helped Me Achieve My Goals.

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