Hi everyone, I'm Hilary Kerr and this is Life Lessons, a podcast spotlighting women who

have incredible careers within a single field or industry. We talk about everything from

how they got their start to the best things they've learned along the way. Today I am so

excited to welcome the co-head writer of Jimmy Kimmel Live in the studio with me, the

one and only Molly McNierney. Not only is she one of the funniest and best humans I know,

she's also a true force in the late-night TV show world, having worked for Jimmy Kimmel Live

for 16 years, moving up from an assistant to running the entire writing team. I'm so excited

to sit down with her to talk about work and everything she's learned along the way.

Now, on Life Lessons, it's Molly McNierney.

So Molly, we like to start at the beginning on this podcast. So what did you study in

school and what did you think you were going to be when you grew up? When I was very little,

I thought I was going to be a veterinarian and then my mom told me that would require

that I put dogs to sleep and then I quickly changed courses. What a dream pressure, right?

She was good at that. I was a journalism major when she University of Kansas and I wanted

to be more than anything a news anchor. I would walk her on my house with a paper towel

roll and talk into it like a microphone and report on the news stories around the neighborhood

to an old camcorder, my brother would carry her on the house, and that was my dream to

be a news anchor. And in college, so I went and studied broadcast journalism that first

year, the first summer after college, I went and visited the local news station in St. Louis.

And I shadowed this woman who had the dream job for me and I was so inspired. I couldn't

believe it. I got to watch her go do her thing and go to location and she'd report and I

got to go in the truck with her and I thought, this is it. This is all I've ever wanted.

...