Written by: Miss Perry 

“My journey has honestly had more downs than ups, and there were so many times I wanted to give up. I’d call my mom crying, saying I was going to quit and go to grad school. Being a woman in the boys club is hard, even when you’re one of the boys.”

Shelby Sos ( last name is pronounced “Sauce”) is the infamous Night Jock for Z104.3 for iHeartMedia Baltimore. But before she was Shelby, she had a couple nicknames as an intern. “When I started my career in radio, I was called “Intern Shelby” or “Wednesday Addams” because I wore a lot of black. Within weeks, everyone at work started calling me “Sos”. When I would get called in to be on air, it was a reflex to call me by my last name so listeners started to call me by my last name as well. When I started my night show six months ago I had to decide if I wanted to be “Shelby” or “Sos”. Since the market I work in, was the same market as my old job it made sense to keep going by my last name, since that’s what the listeners know. Is it the safest idea? Definitely not!”

Like most of us women in radio, Shelby Sos describes radio as being one of her wildest dreams. “I had been wanting to start my radio career for a while, but kept hitting road blocks. When I was in college one of my classmates was an intern for the Kane Show, and told me they were hiring. I applied in April 2016, and kept sending e-mails to the producer of the show until finally I was called for an interview in July 2016. The date they picked for the interview, I was supposed to be on a work trip in another state. I canceled the trip, lost hundreds of dollars, just for the interview. It worked out, I got hired out of hundreds of applicants as a Kane Show intern!”

Her resilience and persistence has allowed Shelby Sos to grow and become the dynamic personality she is now. We concluded interview with advice about being an upcoming women in radio and what she would leave for aspiring women in the industry. “Keep going. There are going to be times when you feel like giving up because you don’t see yourself succeeding, but that just means something big is about to happen! Everything you’re about to do is right. Keep advocating for yourself because if you don’t, who will?”