This TV news anchor is leaving ABC30 in Fresno for full-ride fellowship. What’s next?

Brittany Jacob is leaving her job at ABC30 and going back to school.

“I’m hanging up my news hat,” the reporter/anchor announced in a social media post Friday.

“Wow. I said it, and it’s really starting to sink in.”

The Houston native said she was accepted into the Haas Business program at UC Berkeley and will start working toward a Master’s of Business Administration as a full-ride Consortium Fellow.

“This has been my prayer for years to pursue a fully-funded graduate degree,” Jacob wrote.

“Timing is everything!”

This isn’t the first career change for Jacob. Before getting into the news business, she worked in media sales and marketing in Washington D.C. The change came with a $60,000 pay cut, but being a TV news personality had been a childhood dream, she wrote.

She’s been with Action News since 2020 and prior to that served as an evening weekend anchor and the Southern Illinois Bureau Chief at KFVS12 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Jacob says the move won’t necessarily put her out of the news industry forever, but it will allow her to impact “the corporate side of the business.”

Next week will be Jacob’s last with the station.

The latest departure at ABC30

While there is still no shortage of well-known faces on the Action News team (Warren Armstrong, Margot Kim, Graciela Moreno), the station has seen some turnover the past few months.

This is the fourth departure at the station since April, when Madeline Evans left to follow the the deployment of her Navy pilot husband.

Evans was followed by Alyssa Flores Johansen and Amanda Venegas in May. Flores Johansen is now a public information officer with UC Merced. Venegas left to spend more time with her family.