RSS
Home
TV's Alexis Glick predicts a wild economic time in 2009
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Glick, at the helm of Fox Business Network.
However you do the math, Alexis Glick is perched on the powerful side of any equation. She’s Vice President of Fox Business Network (FBN), the anchorwoman for two of the network’s popular morning business news shows, a wife, a mother of three boys, and a self-professed fiend on the basketball court.
“For me, my entire career has been being in the ‘Boy’s Club’ or the ‘Boy’s Network,’” Glick says. “And, it had suited me perfectly because, frankly, to be honest with you … I am truly a man in a woman’s body.” She chuckles and adds, “They just get me dressed up in the morning and put this beautiful makeup on and transform my hair. But, I like to talk about sports—for six hours a day. It works out pretty well for me.”
It works out quite nicely for the rest of us, too.
At 36, Glick is one of the youngest, most talked about business mavens in broadcasting. In addition to her on-air and behind-the-scenes duties at FBN, she maintains a significant online presence via the popular blogsite, The Glick Report. The blog goes beyond rehashing the events on her morning shows and delivers passionate insights on business and finance—two issues on which, she says, there isn’t a shortage of conversation.
The recent economic crisis immediately comes to mind.
“The most exciting part about covering the economy is that … most people talk about the Great Depression of the 1930s, but now it’s all about The Great Panic of 2008,” she muses. “And, I find that incredibly interesting. What’s so challenging about this market is that it is unbelievably dynamic.”
Not that Glick minds. In fact, she’s used to living on the edge, professionally at least.
“Almost any institution or job that I have had in my life has been like being on the foul line with three seconds left in the game, and do you want the ball?” she notes. “Because, let’s be honest, this work is full of pressure, it’s intense, it’s changing and [you ask yourself]: ‘Do you want it?’ In an environment like this, when so much is changing on a minute-by-minute or hour-by-hour basis, it forces you to be incredibly on top of your ball game. You have to be incredibly bright about what it is going on—well read and well prepared for the tough questions.”
Glick sees the morning news portal as an opportunity to be a conduit for viewers to ask the tough questions. More importantly, she says, she strives to offer “realistic” answers to the economic dilemmas that have been facing the nation.
But Glick stands out for other reasons. Her passion is, quite simply, uncontainable and often infectious.
Using the fiery energy she is now revered for, she weaved herself into the FOX News fabric, first, by coming on board as the Director of Business News in the fall of 2006. A year later, she nabbed the VP spot and began anchoring Money for Breakfas (7-9 a.m. EST/8-10 a.m. CST). The engrossing morning show, known for its savvy up-to-the-second business headlines, among a wide range of other topics, initially allowed viewers to embrace Glick’s style—direct with a somewhat sassy delivery. She also anchors Opening Bell, currently airing at 9 a.m. EST/10 a.m. CST.
That may be a lot to handle, but apparently Glick is savvy at dribbling many balls on the business court. Long before she came to FOX, she was Executive Director at Morgan Stanley and oversaw the New York Stock Exchange Floor Operations—she was the first woman, and youngest person, to manage an operation of such huge magnitude. She was so well-versed in “stock talk,” she eventually became senior trading correspondent for CNBC, reporting from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for CNBC’s Squawk Box while also tossing in her creative two-cents worth to Street Signs and Closing Bell for the network before moving to NBC. There, she co-anchored the third hour of NBC’s The Today Show.
She was also a basketball player for a small New York league and admits she’s a bona fide “athlete and jock.”
But it’s her sportsmanship that fuels her success in the field of business and finance. “A lot of former [Wall Street] traders have some form of athletic background, and that is what makes them so competitive and aggressive and tenacious,” Glick adds. “They have the same kind of sports ethic that makes them hungry and excited.”
Still, there’s one question she can’t escape: How does a woman deal with the fact that she is one of the only females in a male-oriented field?
“I never go into something with the idea that it’s this ‘Old Boy’s Club’ or ‘How am I going to fit in; how am I going to make my voice heard?’” she says. “You sit in a room, you listen, you contribute, you dot your I’s and cross your T’s and don’t show up to any meeting without being prepared.”
Much of that, in these curious economic times, has to do with intelligently looking ahead and projecting how scenarios might play out in the future. On that note, Glick is particularly candid about what needs to happen in 2009 (see sidebar).
“The big issue [of 2009] will be how do we take ourselves out of a recession and what does the new president do to stimulate the economy,” she says. “There’s a perception, whether we like it or not, that we’re in a recession. We will probably see, in the next couple of executive quarters, a negative quarterly Gross Domestic Product, so that by the time the new president gets in office, he will have to address how to make this economy healthy. And that will be, without a doubt, his number one item on his agenda.”
Related Articles:
Comments
