How Jeanne Sparrow ’91 hit a crossroads and marched toward a fulfilling life

Weinberg’s Spring 2022 Convocation Speaker, Jeanne Sparrow has enjoyed an award-winning career in Chicago media after creating her own definition of personal success.

As Jeanne Sparrow ’91 approached her final year as a Northwestern University undergraduate, she admittedly needed some thoughtful guidance.

With the required coursework for her psychology degree nearly complete, Sparrow contemplated entering a year-long program to graduate with honors. While the opportunity excited her parents, Sparrow was less enthused.

“I had my eyes on other things and departmental honors wasn’t necessarily one of them,” Sparrow says, citing her work at WNUR, the University’s radio station, and leading the Theta Alpha chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Her advisor, James Bryan, an irreverent, but gloriously intriguing psychology professor with a penchant for colorful language and challenging conventional wisdom, urged Sparrow to craft her own definition of personal success.

“The relentless pursuit of achievement is what gets us to a place as special as Northwestern, but it doesn’t always serve our best and highest needs,” Sparrow says. “I needed to start making choices about who I wanted to be in the world.”

An accomplished media career
Ignited by Bryan’s counsel, Sparrow ditched plans for graduate school and a potential career as a therapist to instead pursue her passion for radio following graduation.

Over the last three decades, Sparrow has captured seven Emmy awards and emerged a Chicago broadcasting mainstay, hosting daily radio and television shows, interviewing Hollywood powerhouses like Jamie Foxx, Kevin Costner, and Halle Berry, and diving into social and political topics with expert guests as well as listeners.

“And because every day is different, I lean into my liberal arts education constantly,” Sparrow says before dubbing her undergraduate studies “a happy little accident.”

Sparrow was born and raised in New Iberia, Louisiana – “The place where they make Tabasco sauce,” she calls it. – the daughter of a Morton Salt facility foreman and a choral teacher holding a master’s degree in music from Northwestern.

“I grew up in a home knowing Northwestern University was something special,” Sparrow says.

She arrived in Evanston at 17, unsettled about her future and stumbling into her psychology major after being unable to access classes at the School of Communication. In sampling classes in areas such as philosophy, Latin, geology, and technology, Sparrow found a lively intellectual home for her innate curiosity.

“It was all so impractical, but exactly where I needed to be,” she says.

Fueled by her liberal arts education
Sparrow credits that liberal arts education for intensifying her always-inquisitive spirit. It provided her a breadth of knowledge across different topics, a willingness to accept what she did not know, and the courage to ask probing questions. The training served Sparrow well when she landed in Chicago radio, where one of her first bosses wondered how she could talk to anybody about anything.

“The truth is that’s my nature, but it was turned into practice at Northwestern,” she says.

Sparrow has enjoyed an enriching professional life featuring turns in radio and television as well as voiceover work, acting, corporate communications consulting, and, most recently, launching a self-improvement podcast called Fearless Authenticity. It’s a life that energizes Sparrow as well as an existence honoring the challenge Bryan issued her more than 30 years ago.

“We don’t pay any tax for being curious,” Sparrow says. “I love the opportunity to connect with people and discover because that’s exactly the person I want to be.”

Listen to Jeanne’s inspiring message to Class of 2022 graduates:

??? Big news. HUGE!!!!! ???
I am so thrilled to share that I will be serving as the keynote speaker for the Northwestern University – Weinberg School of Arts and Sciences convocation ceremony this Spring. #GoWildcats! #NUAlumni pic.twitter.com/tHHanAgRA2

— Jeanne Sparrow (@JMSparrow) March 30, 2022