50 Grads, 50 Years

If Aalia Adam’s journey to the anchor desk at Global Montreal is proof of anything, it’s that patience is a virtue.

Adam (Liberal Arts, 2009) spent years interning, taking short-term contracts and putting in the work. She spent 5 years working in Toronto before she got to claim her seat on the evening news desk in her hometown of Montreal.

Adam knew she was interested in journalism in high school and wanted to explore how film and video could be used to tell true stories and inform the public.

She sent her CV to all the major English media networks in Montreal, asking to shadow a reporter to get a feel for the trade.

Her request was met with some skepticism – usually the newsrooms took interns from university, not high school – but the manager at Global agreed to have her come in.

This was the beginning of Adam’s introduction to the world of broadcast journalism and she continued to intern there during her time in Cegep.

“I actually did my very first story at Champlain,” she said. “It was about voter apathy and it was an election year. And I was just about to turn 18.”

She went to the college’s campus and interviewed students about their intentions to vote.

“That was my first TV report to go on the air.”

Thanks to her persistence, Global hired Adam as a freelancer and she would fill in on weekends and holidays while she pursed her studies in journalism at Concordia.

Her first real contract was with Citytv where she worked at Breakfast Television on a maternity leave replacement for one year. Once that ended, Adam started freelancing for CTV Montreal, learning to do weather and rubbing elbows with industry veterans.

“It was a great experience working with Mutsumi Takahashi,” she said.

Not long after Adam was married, her husband took a position in Toronto and she agreed to go along to see what opportunities there were in a larger English market.

Adam was hired on at Global’s Toronto station working as a videojournalist and producing content for the company’s YouTube page.

She said making more in-depth, longer form videos brought her back to her early love of documentaries and helped her to get a permanent job at Global.

“From there it was one opportunity after another,” she said. Before long, Adam was hosting the weekend morning show doing news and current affairs.

“It was another one of my dreams to host a morning show,” she said. “Sure, I had to wake up at four in the morning but it was worth it.”

The timing couldn’t have been better when Adam was offered a chance to come back to Montreal in 2022 and anchor the news, considering she had a toddler at home and wanted to be closer to her family.

“I value my village and having that support around me,” she said.

Adam took over as the Montreal and Maritimes anchor for the evening newscasts on Global TV in September.

Adam’s advice for current students and recent grads: “Follow your passion. If you are passionate about something and you are not sure what the opportunities are, if you’re not sure you want to do that as a career, just ask, reach out to people in similar positions. There’s no harm in finding out what a job is like. I followed my heart, I asked questions and I ended up with my dream job.”