Huff Shares Career Story with South Shore Women

Gail Huff did not come to Hingham on Thursday to campaign for her husband.

Instead, the Massachusetts Senator’s Wife and long-time news reporter shared stories with the South Shore Women’s Business Network of how she balanced family life while rising to success in the working-world.

Huff said she knew she wanted to be a television news reporter since she was 8-years-old,  inspired  by a traveling news reporter and sparked by a  mildly sexist comment made by her father.

“I was sitting, watching the Evening News with Walter Cronkite, with my dad and my uncle and a reporter came on,” she said.  “I don’t remember what exotic place he was in… but I said to myself, ‘that’s what I want to do.  I’m going to travel to exotic far-away places and I’m going to tell stories.'   So I told my dad and my uncle that that’s what I want to do when I grow up… and my dad said, ‘you’ll never be able to do that because you’re a girl.’ ”

Huff joked that her father’s comment was all she needed for motivation to pursue her dream.

She  met her husband, Scott Brown while studying journalism in graduate school at Emerson College, 28 years ago. The two have since been married for 26 years and have two daughters.

After grad school, she started her career in small news markets, at TV stations in Greenville, NC, Providence, RI, Hartford, CT, and Springfield, MA before being hired as a producer for Chronicle in Boston. 

While raising two young daughters, she took a position with the early morning  “Eye Opener” shift for WCVB,  while her husband worked nights.

“I did this so Scott and I didn’t have to do daycare, so I was home in the afternoon and night and he was home in the morning to get the kids ready for school,” she said.

“This is not a pretty picture… his idea of doing the girls hair was: they would turn their head upside down, put it in a scrunchie, and they would go to school with what I called the ‘Pebbles” hairdo,” she joked.

Huff laughed about how Brown’s sense of fashion differed from hers and said the two still  get into arguments- like most married couples- about how many pairs of shoes she owns. But she explained to the crowd in Hingham, made up of mostly women, that her marriage works because she and Brown have never viewed raising two children as a sacrifice but as part of a team.

“He wanted everything to work out for me both as a reporter and as a mother,” Huff said.

When Brown was elected as Senator, she decided to support her husband by moving to Washington DC with him and took a job as a news reporter for WJLA-TV7.

“I wanted to continue to share our daily lives and not just see him once a week,” she said.

Huff explained that dealing with transitions in your life is part of being a working woman.

“If you want to work, and want to have a family, you are going to have to make choices, and it can be really hard,” she said. “The best you can hope for is that you find a happy medium and you don’t expect perfection.”

After her presentation, Huff told the business professionals in the audience to contact her husband If they are having struggles with their company. 

The Senator’s wife personally shook hands and introduced herself to every table at the Derby Street Clubhouse at Linden Ponds. 

Huff was a guest of the South Shore Women’s Business Network.

The South Shore Women’s Business Network is the region’s premier networking organization. Comprised of more than 300 business professionals that encompass a wide range of industries, SSWBN is dedicated to helping its members make valuable business connections through monthly networking breakfasts and luncheons, professional development seminars and workshops, and business roundtables. SSWBN also offers educational and leadership opportunities within the network while generating new business for its members through member referrals. For more information, visit www.sswbn.org.