Longtime NCTV17 Executive Director Liz Spencer is stepping down.
Last week, NCTV17 — Naperville’s nonprofit community television station — reported that Spencer will be beginning the “next chapter of her journey” at the end of the year.
A search is underway for the station’s next leader.
“It’s been an honor and a privilege the entire time,” Spencer said. “I don’t take it lightly. It’s been a great, great journey. I will treasure it forever.”
Asked what her next chapter will entail, Spencer said she’s a storyteller and that she continues to do just that. First and foremost, she wants to spend time looking into and telling her family’s story, she said.
“I want to be able to have time to do that and give that to my family. … And the beautiful thing is I can do it at my own pace for my own audience,” she said. “With the time that we’re in right now, everybody is our own content producer. So I’m just going to be my own content producer.”
The NCTV17 Board of Directors has hired virtual firm Kistner Eddy Executive Services Inc. to conduct the search process for a new executive director, according to Spencer. The firm is currently interviewing stakeholders and staff and will return to NCTV17 over the next few weeks with “a comprehensive look at what that next leader looks like for us,” she said.
The firm will then begin its search process, an undertaking that will involve “a tremendous amount of interviewing,” Spencer said.
“This leadership (position) is a big role within the community, so there’s a lot of steps in that process,” she said. Spencer will stay on until the station’s next leader is identified.
Spencer joined NCTV17 23 years ago.
She succeeded Mary Lou Wehrli as executive director, who prior to Spencer led NCTV17 for about three years.
Wehrli, reached over the phone, recalled hiring Spencer.
“She checked all the boxes,” Wehrli, also a former Forest Preserve District Board commissioner DuPage County, said. “Just her demeanor, her understanding of technology and people and how to tell a story. Her bright energy and all the things Naperville values and wants in its leaders.”
Spencer was the “right person in the right place at the right time,” she said.
Wehrli has been proud to watch Spencer lead NCTV17 over the past two decades, she said.
“We’re lucky to have attracted her for as long as we have,” Wehrli said.
Spencer grew up in the Clarendon Hills/Hinsdale area. When she set off to Hope College in Holland, Michigan, she had no idea what she wanted to do, she said. She briefly entertained the idea of becoming a doctor but after taking a Media 101 class, she started to consider a career in television.
“I had no idea you could have a job in (that),” she said.
After graduating, Spencer moved back to the Chicago area and held several internships. Ultimately, her career prior to joining NCTV17 focused on children’s, documentary and special events programming, Spencer said.
What she’s loved across her career is that being in television and media, “every day is a little bit different,” she said.
NCTV17’s transition in leadership comes after the station last year went before the Naperville City Council to request financial support. At the time, Spencer divulged that the one-two punch of soaring inflation in recent years and changes to NCTV17’s revenue base had forced the station to walk a tight line with its budget.
Currently, though, NCTV17 is stable, Spencer said.
“We are holding our budget line,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anybody right now in this current economic reality that is flush, but we are holding our own economic line.”
What really helped set the station up for this year and into the next was a $250,000 state grant that it received through state Sen. Laura Ellman, D-Naperville, she said. As NCTV17 looks ahead, Spencer said the station is developing some strategies for charting a path forward.
But she also emphasized that as a nonprofit, NCTV17 relies on community support.
“That’s how we’re going to move NCTV forward, is through that type of philanthropy and fundraising in our own community,” she said.
Asked if there was a hopeful timeline for selecting her successor, Spencer said the priority for both her and the station is that “we hire the best person for the job.”
“If that happens quickly, great,” she said. “If it takes longer, that’s fine too.”
Spencer said she’ll miss the NCTV17 team when she leaves. The station has produced more than 100 alumni over her tenure, she said.
“I always joke that you’re always part of the NCTV family when somebody leaves. So I say that to myself. I’m always family.”
