Today's Savannah Guthrie reveals big risk at work that could have ended very differently 

Savannah Guthrie is a veteran on the Today Show and a familiar face on the main news desk each morning. 

She’s faced a lot of changes over the years, from co-hosting alongside Matt Lauer, to Hoda Kotb, and most recently, Craig Melvin. Savannah has been incredibly open about the ups and downs of her career too, and recently got candid about a big risk she took to stay true to herself – and it’s not for the faint hearted! 

The NBC favorite was chatting to Today.com about leaving her job behind in TV news to attend law school, only to later walk away from a job in law to go back to what she truly believed in – television. 

Savannah made a huge U-turn in her life

Savannah’s life could well have gone in a very different direction if it wasn’t for her taking a leap of faith and making these brave choices. 

© Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images

She explained: “For me, key moments of taking big chances and essentially betting on myself paid off in a big way and you have to practice that. It never feels great in the moment, but if you’ve done it once and it turned out okay, it gives you the confidence to do it again and again and again.” 

© Jamie McCarthy

She continued: “I really believe we will be called on over and over again in our lives to take a risk, a leap, whether it’s our personal lives, risking vulnerability in a relationship, or whether it’s a career move that has you pursuing a lifelong dream, not knowing if anything in that path is assured.” 

The Today Show host nearly became a lawyer

Savannah has opened up about this before on Brooke Shields’ podcast, Now What? On her change from returning to the media after earning a law degree, she told the supermodel: “The long story short is I went to law school, I got a job at the law firm, I had this clerkship with a federal judge all lined up, and in law school that’s a big deal. And I was about to come work for the judge, it was going to be in September, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t really what I wanted. 

“This whole legal path was there but I had this secret dream of wanting to be a correspondent, I wanted to be on the national news, I wanted to make it. That was a very far fetched idea where I was sitting in Washington D.C. at a law firm, but I decided if I am going to do it, I’ve got to do it now.” 

On the moment she dramatically quit to follow her dreams, she said: “So I called the judge, and this never happens, you don’t quit a clerkship before you’ve begun, but I did. He said, ‘come in and see me’. 

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“I tried to explain to him that I had this dream, and it’s what I want to do, and he asked me if I had a job offer. I said ‘No sir.’ He said ‘Do you have any leads or prospects, why now?’ And I said ‘No, I have nothing.'” 

She continued: “He said ‘I get it, it’s your dream. Why don’t you come and do this clerkship and then do it afterwards, it’s only a year. You’re only going to be enhanced by this experience.'” “And I said ‘judge, I know you are right, this makes perfect sense. But I know myself, and if I don’t do it now, I’m never going to have the courage again.’ And so he just said ‘Okay’.” 

© Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty I

Savannah has worked on the Today Show since 2012

Of course, Savannah’s decision was the right one for her, and she’s been happily working on NBC’s long-running morning show for over two decades. In this time, she’s reported on some major news events including the Olympics, royal deaths and the US elections, and has got to travel the world. 

She’s also written several books away from work, including her most recent one – Mostly What God Does – which has become a New York Times Bestseller.