Former WOUB Student Kim Day is named “Woman of the Year”

Kim (Bedford) Day has always wanted to make a difference in her community. Now, after recently being named 2024 Woman of the Year in her Tennessee hometown, she knows she is doing just that.

“On Memorial Day, I was presented with the 2024 Fountain City Woman of Year award,” said Day. “It was really special to know that I am making an impact in the community.”

As PTO president and a local business owner, Day is very involved in her community. She owns “Kim Day Training,” a health and fitness facility in Knoxville, Tennessee where she is a class instructor and personal trainer. It’s not the career path that Day originally planned when she left Alliance, Ohio and started studying broadcast journalism at Ohio University. But she says the skills she learned in Athens helped her get to where she is today.

“I chose Ohio University for its well-known journalism program,” said Day. “I really wanted to be a broadcast journalist and got involved at WOUB during my freshman year.”

During her sophomore year, she worked the early morning radio shift at WOUB and then eventually worked her way into television news reporting and anchoring.

“I need to thank Fred Kight (former WOUB Assistant News Director) for training me with those dreadful early morning radio shifts because now I’m up at 4 a.m. most days to teach at the gym,” said Day with a laugh. “The hands-on learning that we received at WOUB was so valuable. I learned how to do everything from top to bottom, and not just on-air reporting. I also learned to edit, use a camera and produce an entire TV broadcast all on my own. I wouldn’t have gotten that anywhere else. When I graduated, I was comfortable and ready to tackle a media job on my own.”

After graduation, Day was hired as a TV reporter in Knoxville and worked there for three years. Then in 2008, there was a company-wide layoff, and Day lost her job.

“I was unemployed for six months. During that time, the gym I was going to was looking for instructors. I realized I could get paid to teach and have a free gym membership. I thought ‘Wow, sign me up!’ I eventually got a media job again at the DIY network where I was doing project management work behind the scenes. I did that for two years. But I kept doing personal training on the side and realized my priorities had changed. Once I got engaged to be married, I knew I wanted more flexibility because I wanted a family someday," she added.

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Day got certified as a personal trainer, taught classes for two more years and then opened her own gym last year.

“My favorite part of fitness and personal training are the people,” said Day. “The friendships and relationships I have made truly feel like family to me.”

And even though she is not on TV each night talking to the people of her community anymore about news and information, she says she’s using the communication skills learned at Ohio University and WOUB to talk to her community in other important ways.

“Being a group fitness instructor and personal trainer is a job where you have to be really comfortable with public speaking and speaking in front of a lot of people all the time,” said Day. “I have been told that I am very good being in front of the room, and I tell people it’s from my journalism degree and my time at WOUB. I learned to be comfortable speaking in front of people. I learned to manage and multitask which is helping me run a business because when you put on a broadcast at WOUB, there are so many hands in the fire, and you are juggling so many things. I credit WOUB for not just public speaking, but the skills needed to run a business.”