Making an Impact: Stephanie Dhue

by Chuck Cascio, Author and Former South Lakes Teacher

Stephanie Dhue is making an impact

A career that led Stephanie Dhue (née Wood) to be an Emmy Award-winning Senior Producer at CNBC began with a surprise to the 1985 graduate of South Lakes High School.

“I signed up for a Media Communications class at South Lakes, and on the first day, I found that it meant writing for the school newspaper, The Sentinel," she recalls. “I didn’t know the first thing about newspaper writing, but I had a nice camera and was also taking a photography elective, so my journalism teacher kindly let me stay on the staff and take pictures, which taught me the basics of news coverage."

The result was a realization for Stephanie: “I graduated from South Lakes knowing that I wanted to pursue a career in journalism!" Since then, she has embraced the challenges of the profession: “I am motivated by a desire to give people access to objective news and information so they are empowered to make decisions."

That commitment grew steadily from high school to George Mason University, where she wrote for the school's Broadside newspaper (now called The Fourth Estate), worked on a sports news program, and “pushed for student-led TV news" while engaging in several internships, including one with WUSA’s Capital Edition, a Washington, D.C., program modeled after CBS’ Sunday Morning.

At GMU, another decision significantly impacted her future: "For job security, my dad thought I should major in accounting. I had no interest--or aptitude--for accounting, but I found from covering business news that the work people do, how they make money, and how they save and invest their earnings are interesting, meaningful topics."

Her business and journalism experience led Stephanie to work on The Insiders with Jack Anderson, a televised investigative news magazine on the Financial News Network. From there, her career and commitment soared with roles at PBS Nightly Business Report, Fox Business Network, and since 2011, at CNBC.

Stephanie has covered many significant business-related stories such as “the policy changes ushered in by the Telecom Act of 1996; the World Wide Web; the e-commerce and dot-com boom, and the bust that followed. In early 2000, I was assigned a story about how Enron was entering the 'broadband market’ and how that would revolutionize the business."

Stephanie correctly grew increasingly skeptical that Enron’s impact would be positive: “A year later, the company failed spectacularly in one of history’s largest accounting scandals, which I also covered along with the subsequent policy debate and legal changes aimed at providing investors greater protection and bringing more accountability to financial reports."

The Emmy Award was achieved in 2005 when Stephanie helped cover the economic emergence of China, which included China's National Offshore Oil Corporation effort to buy UNOCAL, a U.S. domestic energy company, “an effort that was thwarted after political backlash and concerns over national security," Stephanie says.

Stephanie continues to dig deeply into a range of business-related stories, including “the explaining of interest-only mortgages, subprime loans, and credit-default swaps...the very things that fueled the 2008 financial crisis.” Add to the list a range of topics “from the real estate recovery to politics and trade and, currently, personal finance."

From her SLHS days, Stephanie recalls a particularly influential story she covered for The Sentinel. She took photos and wrote about the SLHS narcotics officer because “it allowed me to 'show and tell' students, faculty, and community why this role had come to South Lakes. I realized the importance of bringing accountability to the community because we had a right to know who this person was at our school and what authority he had."

For Stephanie, whose family moved in 1981 from Gaithersburg, Md., to Harbor Court on Lake Thoreau, Reston memories such as stocking shelves at People’s Drug Store (now CVS) and swimming and ice-skating on the lake remain significant. Perhaps they even influence how she wants to continue to make an impact: “I would like to create a community around trusted news so people can have a safe place to discuss important topics. I get great satisfaction when I can help people understand how personal and policy choices can impact their lives.”