Editor’s Note: Liz Claman joined FOX Business Network as an anchor in October 2007 following stints at NBC in Boston, ABC in Cleveland and, most recently, CNBC in New York. The Emmy Award winner co-anchors the Fox Business block with David Asman, Fox Business Bulls & Bears, and hosts Countdown to the Closing Bell from 3-4 PM. Recently, she sat down with wowOwow to talk about marching into media to the beat of her own drum, the importance of small business, what she loves about Fox Business, the event that left her with internal bleeding and more

On Finding Her Career Path

wOw: So Liz, you come from a family in entertainment. Your mom is an actress; your sister is at Showtime. You have another sister —

LIZ CLAMAN: I’ve got a sister who is a studio violinist. She does the music to all the movies and Super Bowl commercials. Everybody, sort of by extension, is involved in the entertainment industry.

wOw: Did this have an impact on your career choices? Was a life in the entertainment industry encouraged in your family when you were growing up?

LIZ: Well, they all thought I was this sort of freak of nature running around, dying to cover fires and explosions and drug busts and earthquakes. They said, “Don’t you want to just go work at Samuel Goldwyn Productions?" Which I did. I took a job right out of college as a receptionist at Samuel Goldwyn Pictures, and everybody kept saying, “You’re going to be a D-Girl some day.” You know, the letter “D” for development. “You’ll be a D-Girl some day.” I said, “I don’t want to be a D-Girl. I want to be out on the sooty driveway of somebody’s house where somebody’s just been rescued by the fire department.” I don’t know, it was, genetically, something that I wanted to do. I wanted to tell a real story out there.

wOw: So that’s the direction that you ran in.

LIZ: And it took me directly away from Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Hollywood and everything all my friends from high school were doing.

wOw: And it then took you to CNBC?

LIZ: First, it took me to KCBS in Los Angeles as the production assistant. I started as an intern. I marched in there the summer before I graduated from Berkeley and said, “I’ll work for free.” And they said, “Well, how about an internship?” And so I would research stories for the reporters and I got to know some of them. At the time, you know, it was Ann Curry, Paula Zahn, Pat O’Brien, Jim Lampley, Steve Kmetko. And they all said, “You’ve got to go to the Midwest. Make a little tape and go to the Midwest.”

After I graduated from college and I had the moment as the receptionist at Samuel Goldwyn Pictures and realized that wasn’t working for me, I came back to Channel 2 as a production assistant. I delivered newspapers, drove reporters to stories, got Egg McMuffins for the news director.

wOw: The real grunt work.

LIZ: Exactly. I made friends with the camera guys. They helped me make a tape and I sent it out to small towns, and I got Columbus, OH, which is actually not that small. It’s the 34th-largest market. I filled my car with my books on Edward R. Murrow and a blow-dryer.

wOw: You took the necessities.

LIZ: I shipped myself out to Columbus, OH. I had never been in ice storms before; never touched a cow. I was going straight to the Midwest — I went to Ohio State games, covered bomb detonations. All kinds of stuff. It was reporter boot camp. So I went to ABC in Columbus and, after three and a half years, I went to ABC in Cleveland, which was amazing.

wOw: How so?

LIZ: There I was, covering the Cleveland Browns and the Indians and all the great disasters that Cleveland offers. I say that jokingly. And I made some great friends and learned from really great journalists there. And then I moved to NBC in Boston.

wOw: OK.

LIZ: I went to WHDH. And at that point I thought, “OK, now I’ve cracked the top 10 markets.” But I always had my eye on the prize. I always knew that I wanted to make it to New York or Los Angeles. But I just couldn’t get a job in L.A. So one day I got a call from CNBC. I had told my agent, “I’ll take anything at this point that’s in New York or L.A. I don’t golf. I’ll take the Golf Channel. I don’t cook, I’ll do the Food Channel.” So he called me and said, “CNBC wants to meet you.” So I grabbed a Wall Street Journal, started studying up and moved there.

wOw: And that’s how you made the switch to business?