A Broadcast Associate for Fox Sports, Emma Landis ’24 has been part of the production of some of America’s biggest sports television events.

While the controlled chaos of 25 Indycar drivers racing at 180 miles per hour roared past the U.S. Capitol during last month’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C., Emma Landis ’24 was in the middle of her own controlled chaos inside a Fox Sports production truck, part of a team bringing the one-of-a-kind event to a television audience of over 3 million people.

With her headset abuzz with the voices of the announcers, the producer, and the director, Landis controls the “pylon,” a vertical graphic on the left side of the broadcast that displays the running order of drivers in the race and other crucial information fans rely on to follow the action.

A childhood dream and lots of hustle have culminated in this Broadcast Associate role and a budding career bringing some of America’s most prestigious sporting events, like the NFL Playoffs and the Indianapolis 500, into homes across the country.

Landis was introduced to the world of sports television through her father, Barry Landis ’88, a producer for Fox Sports’ coverage of the NFL and NASCAR. Shadowing her dad at work as a 12-year-old, sitting inside Fox’s “Hollywood Hotel” mobile studio at a NASCAR race and reading off the teleprompter, was the moment of inspiration for her to follow a career in sports.

She took sports communication classes in high school and declared a Communication Studies major on her first day as a Randolph-Macon student. While the young Emma wanted to be a sideline reporter, as she progressed through her classes and Journalism minor, she realized her talents were on the other side of the camera. Then, she came across an internship opportunity with Fox Sports.

“I didn’t want to apply as my dad’s kid,” Landis recalled. “I think I waited a month until I told my parents that I had applied to the internship.” The desire to forge her own path in a familiar industry has served her well. During the summer of 2023, before her senior year, she interned in Los Angeles with Fox Sports as the network broadcasted the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Landis parlayed that experience into opportunities to be a “runner” for NFL games in the fall of 2023. She competed as a forward for RMC Field Hockey on Saturdays, then drove to Washington, D.C., or Charlotte, N.C., to work NFL games on Sundays. From picking up talent from the airport to taking out the trash, runners are responsible for anything and everything to help a broadcast, an experience that gave her perspective on all the pieces that make a successful production.

As Landis approached graduation in the spring of 2024 and was applying for jobs, she got a call from her internship supervisor offering her a spot at Fox Sports in LA. A week after walking across the graduation stage, she drove across the country to start her career in earnest. She served as a Production Assistant for the Senior Vice President of Talent Development for a couple months before being promoted to her current role on Indycar and NFL coverage.

During football season, Landis is with Fox’s “A” crew that covers America’s Game of the Week, including play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and Super Bowl-winning quarterback Tom Brady. In addition to operational logistics, she holds a crucial job during the game, relaying official statistics from the NFL in real time into Fox’s internal system for the announcers’ use and as the backbone of the graphics package.

While working on the pylon for Indycar races, Landis has control over tons of information. She can show viewers time behind the leader, laps led, a track map, current speed, tire type, laps since the last pit stop, and more.

“This position has helped me understand what really tells a story,” Landis explained. “How can we not only lead our announcers to what we want to talk about, but also how can I follow what they’re talking about?” She also points to “the bar test” as a metric for her performance as a graphics producer. “Can somebody be watching the screen without hearing any of the audio and understand what’s going on?”

Landis has been working on Fox’s Indycar coverage since the network won the rights to broadcast the series’ entire schedule starting in 2025. “It’s been really cool to see how it’s progressed,” Landis reflected. “There’s always room for improvement. We’re testing out new things every week to try to make the broadcast better. We’re seeing what works and what doesn’t work, and it’s been a lot of fun.”

Of course, the job has come with plenty of cool moments. Landis highlights big-ticket events like the NFC Championship Game between the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams at Lumen Field and the last two iterations of the Indianapolis 500 as particularly memorable. She also recalls watching the Super Bowl with her friends back in Richmond and seeing a billboard ad she had produced on the biggest television event of the year.

“Oh yeah, I did that,” she told the group. “I can show you the rough cut on my laptop.”

Landis reflects on elements of her RMC experience that helped prepare her for success in her current phase of life. She shows up to meetings 15 minutes early because of the discipline instilled by RMC Field Hockey Head Coach Jess Weiss. In those same meetings, she finds herself sharing wisdom learned in class from Professor Joan Conners. She uses skills she honed in the RMC athletics broadcast booth and as a social media ambassador for the marketing office–valuable hands-on experiences that her colleagues from bigger schools often didn’t have.

All of it has led to a rising star in the industry where each experience builds on the last. During the week 2 game between the Carolina Panthers and Atlanta Falcons this upcoming NFL season, Landis will serve as the lead broadcast associate, producing lower third graphics and further helping drive the storytelling of a game.

Down the road, Landis has an eye towards being a features producer to flex her passion for storytelling, but for now she’s taking every opportunity that she can to travel across the country and bring beloved sporting events to life for viewers.

Of her career philosophy, she quips “I’ve been a big believer of never say no.”