Rashida Jones on Leadership in Media
Former MSNBC President Rashida Jones’s Emmy Award-winning career began with a handwritten neighborhood newsletter she launched with her sister and two friends as children. As the oldest of three siblings, she assumed responsibility, a tendency that would guide her career in journalism. By the time she got to high school, she had already identified her interest in writing and storytelling. When no one else wanted the role of editor of the student paper, Jones stepped in.
“I knew my default was being a leader, and if I see a gap, if I see an opportunity to be that leader, there’s no version of this where I don’t raise my hand,” said Jones during the Patricelli Center for Entrepreneurship’s fall keynote event on Nov. 13.
Jones delivered the Center’s keynote after a day of on-campus appearances, including a session with CSPL: 252 Leadership & Social Innovation: Patricelli Center Impact Fellowship, a class taught by Patricelli Center Director Ahmed Badr ’20. During her talk, Jones recounted her passion for journalism and leadership throughout her career, emphasizing the importance of embracing one’s strengths, recognizing opportunity, and taking initiative in a changing media landscape.
“I liked the idea of not just writing the stories, telling the stories, but … setting the stage of what types of stories we were going to do,” she recalled. “There was no process of thinking about, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to major in?’ Because I knew I wanted to be a journalist.”
Although she entered Hampton University set on pursuing print journalism, a course on broadcast journalism would propel her into her future career. While her classmates vied for on-camera reporter spots at their campus television station, Jones found her calling as a producer. The role allowed her to combine what she loved about storytelling and her natural leadership inclinations: “Working on television is basically one big project—there has to be someone who kind of takes the lead,” Jones said. “I love the idea of being a person in the group project who helped guide and directly lead everyone to what they wanted to do.”
That leadership instinct eventually caught the attention of MSNBC. Only six weeks into her new role at the network, Jones noticed weaknesses in the way the team handled breaking news. Drawing on her earlier experience as a producer for The Weather Channel during Hurricane Katrina, she volunteered to guide the coverage of a major shooting at the D.C. Naval Yard: “I raised my hand to be a leader in that moment, even when I wasn't 100% sure that I could do it, I did—because I knew in the years leading up to that I had done the work, I had the experience, I had that gut instinct of how to navigate these spaces.”
Her initiative prompted the creation of a new leadership role built around her strengths. Throughout her tenure at MSNBC, Jones’s instinct for filling gaps and taking ownership propelled her upward, often before she even knew an opportunity existed. For Jones, leadership was more than a job title: It was an active, daily commitment to her team and their work.
“From the time I started in the newsroom at Hampton to the time I walked out of the [MSNBC] newsroom in January [2025], I knew I went into it every single day doing the work,” Jones said. “I think about how important it is to be loud in our leadership—present, on the front lines—but also think about what it means to be quiet—to listen, to be curious, to help people navigate and talk about tough situations.”
During the Q&A portion of the event, led by Badr, Jones turned her focus to the current media landscape. As the role of legacy media outlets shifts with the rise of social media journalists and content creators, she underscored the importance of fact-checking, editorial rigor, and the enduring role of local journalism in building trust within communities. The tools needed to navigate an increasingly polarized media environment begin, Jones said, with teaching students to develop skills that allow them to pivot into a variety of different spaces: “Curiosity as a leader is one of the most underrated skill sets—it not only allows you to learn and to grow, but it allows people to understand how genuinely interested you are in them.”
