CBS Honors Esther Kartiganer '59 with Contribution to WGS (December 2005)
In December 2005, Esther Kartiganer ‘59, co-chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program Board, retired from a distinguished forty-year career at CBS, where she rose to senior producer at 60 Minutes. In her honor, the network has contributed $50,000 toward an assistant professorship that will be held jointly between WGS and another department.
Kartiganer’s career is itself a lesson for women’s studies. After graduating from Brandeis with a degree in Politics and working for a political pollster, she joined CBS as a temporary office assistant during the presidential primary season of 1964. After two weeks as an assistant, she ended up in charge of gathering precinct returns from
At that time, there were no women either on the air or in positions of power at CBS News. “Central to my success,” Kartiganer notes, “is the fact that I didn’t marry and have children. I was on the road almost constantly for the first year. The men, even one with two sets of twins under 2, thought nothing of traveling. But only single women had the flexibility to put work at the top of their priorities. During that year, I got to know almost everyone at CBS, and that’s how the temporary job became permanent.”
After the election, Kartiganer started working on the documentary side of CBS News, in 1976 she earned the title of producer. From 1979 to 1981 she was assigned to a daytime women’s news magazine show. At 60 Minutes, which she joined in 1982, her notable projects include a segment on the dangerous and sometimes fatal use of sulfites that led to new FDA regulations and one of the first network news stories on shaken baby syndrome. She has been the recipient of 13 Emmy awards.
A Brandeis University Fellow, Kartiganer served as an alumni member of the Brandeis Board of Trustees. She joined the Brandeis Women’s Studies National Board at its inception in 1992. Her decision to direct the CBS gift to WGS, she said, is aimed at building on the program’s strengths and fostering ties to other departments across campus. Thanks to Esther and to CBS, that vision is now closer to being achieved.