From student sidelines to Netflix’s live desk: Lauren Day lands the big one

LOS ANGELES: Lauren Day has swapped conference broadcasts for the biggest streaming stage in the business. The live production specialist has joined Netflix as live production coordinator, a move she announced with the sort of understated excitement that belies just how much runway got her there.

Day’s route to Los Gatos was anything but a straight line. Most recently she spent nearly three years as production manager for Big Ten Network’s StudentU programme, running the show for more than 2,000 annual events across all 18 Big Ten universities on B1G+. She built out broadcast infrastructure at expansion schools including USC, UCLA and the University of Washington, trained student crews from scratch, and wrote the standards that kept everything from wrestling to gymnastics looking broadcast-ready.

Before that came a freelance stretch that reads like a highlight reel in itself: assisting the touring director on the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, multi-camera directing for the Power of Love Gala, and video playback duties at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Layer on a Webby-winning run as producer at Just Women’s Sports — where she helped grow the outlet’s TikTok following from 155,000 to 900,000 — and an Emmy-nominated stint at the NFL directing digital shows, and the résumé stops looking like luck and starts looking like design.

Day’s own account traces further back still, to a University of Michigan degree in film, television and media, and years spent directing live sports broadcasts for Big Ten Network Student U in Ann Arbor before the conference gig ever existed. Thanks, in her telling, went to Ian Schulz, Vicki Prieto and Melissa Pakel for opening Netflix’s door.

Control rooms in Ann Arbor built the instincts; college hockey and red carpets sharpened them. Netflix just inherited the finished product.