Heather Hegedus was born in Boston, but her roots are firmly planted in Lynnfield, where she worked her way up from the Lynnfield High School newspaper to becoming a television news anchor. Today, she’s the host of Fidelity Investments’ “Market Sense” webinar series.
“I’m a proud Pioneer,” Hegedus said. “I still consider 01940 my home.”
While she no longer lives in Lynnfield, a move back to town isn’t out of the question.
“It’s just a special community to me,” Hegedus said.
Hegedus has long held an interest in the news.
“I have a lot of memories of staying up late on election night,” she said. “For me, it wasn’t, like, the Super Bowl that was exciting — it was election night.”
When she was young, Lynnfield did not have a local TV program, so Hegedus spent her time at The Catalyst, the student newspaper at Lynnfield High, where she worked as the features editor. There, she interviewed local Olympian Nancy Kerrigan after Kerrigan won the silver medal in figure skating at the 1994 Winter Olympics.
In college, Hegedus shifted to television, interning at Channel 5. After graduating from Georgetown University, she worked her way up through small markets, starting in Binghamton, New York. From there, she held positions in Syracuse and Hartford, Connecticut, before receiving a call from the news director at Boston 25, who invited her to audition for an anchor role. Hegedus landed the job and stayed there for 11 years.
Georgetown didn’t have a journalism program, so Hegedus attended graduate school at Columbia University. During the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she was with NBC News in Washington, D.C.
“I was working another one of those crazy news shifts… My father called me to say, ‘Turn the TV on…’ and I raced into work, and worked and slept at the news station for a week during Sept. 11,” Hegedus said.
She spent that year covering the recovery efforts in the wake of the attacks.
Hegedus’ shift away from news was partly due to the industry’s changing landscape, which she said is “drastically changing” with the decline of “appointment television.”
“iPhones and the internet and social media have made the need to schedule appointment television time obsolete,” Hegedus said.
While at Boston 25, a former colleague told her about an opening to host Fidelity’s “Market Sense” webinar series. She got the role.
Hegedus said the series is available on all podcast platforms, Fidelity’s Market Sense webpage, YouTube, and LinkedIn every Tuesday at 2 p.m.
For Hegedus, the show’s importance lies in its ability to provide timely educational discussions on market and economic news in an industry where things move quickly. The show is free for everyone to tune in, not just Fidelity customers. If viewers miss a live episode, it’s available online within 24 hours.
Hegedus said many of the skills she picked up as a news anchor have been transferable in her new role, especially “complexity slaying,” or “cutting through the jargon and trying to ask questions in a way that anybody watching the show can understand.”
She credited her co-hosts — Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro Jurrien Timmer, Institutional Portfolio Manager Naveen Malwal, and Framingham Branch Leader and Vice President Leanna Devinney — with giving her a practical “M.B.A.” in finance.
“I learned from the school of Jurrien, Naveen, and Leanna,” she said. “We really want the show to be about viewers and listeners, and whatever is on their minds, depending on what’s happening with the markets.”
Hegedus said what appeals to her about covering finance and investing is that it directly affects people’s lives, which was also why she loved covering local news.
She finds the role particularly rewarding as a woman, noting that she didn’t receive encouragement to pursue a career in finance.
“I feel like there are probably a lot of young women out there who are not being encouraged to consider this as a career,” Hegedus said. “And my message to them is that you don’t have to be a great number-cruncher to have a career in finance, or personal finance, or investing. What you do need to do is have an understanding of some of the concepts.”
Hegedus also had advice for mothers like herself.
“Don’t take the back seat all the time,” she said. “I think a lot of women do that because they feel overwhelmed by money.”
Her new role is hybrid, allowing her 3-year-old daughter, Maddie, to see her discussing financial topics at home.
“I think it’s really empowering that she’s seeing me in this role, talking about people’s money,” Hegedus said.
The Market Sense series reaches about 100,000 viewers per year, excluding podcast listens.
Outside of her work with Fidelity, Hegedus emcees events to support people with special needs and autism.
Hegedus’ 8-year-old son, Brooks, has profound autism, meaning he has both an intellectual disability and autism. She serves on the board for the Profound Autism Alliance, an organization founded by her friend Judith Urisitti, also a mother of a child with profound autism.
Hegedus said children with profound autism are often excluded from research and services due to the challenges of their condition.
“If they’re excluded from research, that means that we are not working towards finding ways to help them,” Hegedus said. “He is not included in most of the research on how to treat things like that.”
She added that the Profound Autism Alliance advocates weekly on Capitol Hill to raise awareness about the exclusion of people with profound autism.
“Autism looks different,” she said.
