by Sonia Moghe
Meet our Brown Girl of the Month of September 2014: Sonia Moghe!
Sonia Moghe is a 29-year-old journalist living in New York City. She has been an on-camera news reporter for local stations like News 12 The Bronx and Brooklyn, WGCL in Atlanta, and KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and recently accepted a job behind the camera as a producer for CNN. Sonia grew up dancing Bharatanatyam, but now she mostly runs through parks and competes in Olympic-length triathlons. Raised in Plano, Texas, she is a proud Texas A&M and Columbia University alum.
“As South Asians, we are taught to have utmost respect for our elders, and do what our parents tell us because they know best. I respect my parents more and more every single day, but I am thankful that I stood up for doing what I loved.
My parents would see the trophies I brought home each weekend as a waste of time. My mother is a physician assistant, and my father is an engineer. They expected me to become a doctor, and I told them I would because I didn’t think any other career was an option.
Still, something inside me drove me to keep up with writing and public speaking.
On Fridays before I left for school, I would sneakily take the suit I wore for competitions with me. Later on those nights, I would call my parents using my giant cell phone from whichever far away school district that week’s competition was being held to tell them where I was. They would be irate with me.
Competitions often meant staying at these schools until midnight, and getting back on buses to return for more rounds the next day at 5 a.m. all weekend. I asked for forgiveness instead of permission from my parents, because otherwise, I never would have gotten to go.
I never would have become part of (possibly the first ever) duet acting team made up of two Indian women to qualify for nationals in the National Forensic League. I never would have gotten to compete at Harvard. While my parents would sometimes publicly congratulate me, at home they were outraged. I should have been spending all of that time studying calculus, which I struggled in. Or I should have spent that time doing SAT prep, but I loved performing our duet, writing and giving speeches.
Nothing prepares you for giving live reports during breaking news like waking up at 5 a.m. as a teen and practicing your performance in front of a brick wall. I learned at an incredibly young age how to perform under pressure, how to improvise, work hard and how to be true to myself.
As a 15-year-old, I had no idea that I would later become a journalist. I just knew I loved writing, talking to people and traveling to new places. My gut kept me going back, week after week to these competitions, and I’m so glad I listened to myself.
I later went to Texas A&M University to major in journalism, but took pre-med classes at first. I compromised with my parents; I would be like Dr. Sanjay Gupta. I would be a doctor for them, and a reporter for myself.
In the end, I started writing for the university newspaper and was immediately hooked. I found a job where I was paid to go to different places every day, talk to people and then write a story about it – what more could I ask for?
In actuality, I was respecting my parents. My father always told me I would never work a day if I did something I loved.”
– Sonia Moghe
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