Following Her Passion for Community Broadcasting Television

Dustin Dumas, MBA ’96, pivots from a finance career to new creative outlet.

Working in banking, finance, and startup companies for the past three
decades has taken Dustin Dumas, MBA ’96, around the world, from
Chicago to Germany to Silicon Valley. But nearly everywhere Dumas has
gone, she also has worked on public access television shows.

Dumas says she gravitated toward local TV, sometimes putting in long
hours in the evenings and weekends, because it gave her a different,
creative outlet.

“I’ve always been in finance,” she says. “And this was the side where I could actually just go and produce and find people that I thought were interesting to interview.”

In 2015, Dumas saw an opportunity to take over as station manager and
editor of the South Orange and Maplewood New Jersey Community Television (SOMAtv) station, where she had worked part time since moving to New Jersey several years earlier.

“Having worked at startups, having worked in business, I approached
managing the station as a businessperson,” she says.

Working with elected city leaders, Dumas overhauled station policies and syndicated the shows for the first time while continuing to produce her own public access program, “Dustin’s Kaleidoscope.” Instead of shutting down operations at the height of the pandemic, Dumas pushed to continue broadcasting on Zoom.

“We had come such a long way in that year that I didn’t want to stop
everything,” Dumas says.

Her tenacity paid off. The station’s programs now air in 14 states, and in
2021, SOMAtv won the Award of Excellence from the New Jersey Access
Group for its “Get Out the Vote” public service announcement.

Dumas credits her success to her McCombs training, which enabled her to rapidly assess the fiscal and organizational challenges the TV station was facing and work with multiple stakeholders to resolve them. “Communication,” she says, “was key.”
 — Alice Popovici

This story appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of McCombs magazine.