BusinessReport.com

It’s a story Todd Ross is fond of telling: As an 8-year-old on a school field trip to Baton Rouge, he had a choice of visiting the USS Kidd or WBRZ-TV. He chose the latter, and went home to Mandeville that night telling his parents he wanted to work at Channel 2 when he grew up.

Nearly 30 years later, Ross is fulfilling that childhood dream. Since May, he has been assistant news director at the station, where he helps in the planning and assignment of stories as well as with the management of reporters, photographers and producers. It’s a challenging job, but one for which Ross is well suited.

“I always felt I was a born leader,” he says. “This was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Ross has spent his entire career in broadcast news. He cut his teeth at WWL-TV in New Orleans, where he was hired first as an intern then as a sports producer while still a student at the University of New Orleans. After graduating, he got a job at WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Ala., where he spent the next five years first as a sports reporter then doing features stories.

Ross returned to his native Louisiana in 2000 to co-anchor WBRZ’s morning show, 2une In, a position he held until earlier this year when the station created the assistant news director job—specifically with him in mind.

“It’s harder than it looks,” Ross says of the position. “In local news, we get into this mind-set where everything is either a body count or a murder count. But there are real people behind those numbers, and their stories are the ones we strive to tell day in and day out.”

Looking to the future, Ross says he intends to stay in Louisiana, also his wife’s home state, and now the home to their 5-year-old daughter Abby and 3-year-old son Blake.

“I don’t see ever leaving,” he says. “Louisiana is home, and I’ve fallen in love with Baton Rouge.”

Who do you most admire in the business community and why?

“Ron Zappe, because he created a business, has sustained it, is successful and has never sold out to anyone else.”