‘21 grad Jana DeCamilla balances 3 kids, TV news, and crime podcast.

The sound of her 2-year-old’s breathing comes through the baby monitor placed next to her phone while she was on an interview call after a very emotional day at work.

“Seeing my daughter see me on TV and screaming and jumping up and down is like better than amillion dollars, so it’s worth it,” said Jana DeCamilla in a shaky voice as tears filled her eyes. 

DeCamilla – a mother of three, fiancée, digital content creator for WRGB in Albany, independent author and all-around go-getter – one way or another, makes it work.

“I’d like to think of her as the next Liz Bishop, maybe one day the next Barbra Walters,” said Silke Johnson, friend of eight years and godmother of DeCamilla’s youngest. 

Her start

DeCamilla has a brother, Billy, and a sister, Erica Bombard. Although they all share the same mother, Karen Kasold Hymes, DeCamilla almost felt like an only child growing up. Billy was 11 years older, Erica was nine, and the two lived with their father from Hymes’ first marriage.  

DeCamilla and her family bounced around a little bit in her younger years, living in three different houses, the first in the small country town of Cooperstown, New York. 

The whole inside of the house was filled with bright colors and the vibrant paint spread onto her bedroom walls, along with a waterbed and a cage in the corner filled with baby ducks. 

After Cooperstown was Albany, New York, the place where she really grew up.  

DeCamilla has been true crime obsessed since a very young age and remembers when she was just 8 years old watching true crime documentaries at home with her best friend, Juliana Bernier.

They were so fascinated with the psychology of these monstrous crimes, that they needed their questions answered. “Why would someone do this? What is wrong with them?” 

When DeCamilla fell in love with the process of digging up the childhood of serial killers and getting to the bottom of cold cases, she knew it was going to be a lifelong love interest.

School and style 

Electric blue, tropical pink, wild orchid purple and fire engine, stop the room red. 

Ever since she was 11 years old (the first time she dyed her hair) DeCamilla has always had a unique way of expressing herself. She loved to stand out, and for her, colored hair felt like the right way to do that.

“I remember quite a bit of red,” VTSU Castleton Communications Professor David Blow said. 

“She always had really bright hair,” said fellow Communications Professor Sam Davis-Boyd. 

“I think she had bright pink hair when she first joined my class,” Communications Department Chair Michael Talbott said. 

As it was not common in her developing years for people to be walking around with full heads of neon, “unless you shopped at Hot Topic and wore baggy jeans with chains,” dying her hair was an important part of who DeCamilla was. She liked being remembered as the girl with bright hair who, instead of baggy jeans, wore Uggs and splattered her bubbly personality all over you. 

“It hurts my soul to have to have this boring brown hair. But, colorful hair is more common now, so I like to think that I can blend in and STILL stand out,” DeCamilla said. 

College started slow for DeCamila. She began at a college prep school when she was 18 but knew she was “in no way ready to be there.” So, the young adult started to waitress at “The Lagoon” in Lake George instead. 

“I got her published in the Lake George Mirror, about the Lagoon, and I think it ignited a little bit of a spark. She always liked to write, but I think she had fun getting published,” Blow said. 

But writing was in her veins prior to meeting Blow. In April of 2019, DeCamilla published her first book on Amazon called “Scarlet’s Angel.”

“She was always a great communicator and those are skills you need for writing,” Talbott said.

About three years after starting at the Lagoon, in January 2016, 21-year-old DeCamilla had her first son, Cire, and she knew she needed to give the college world another try. 

The following year she started her college journey at SUNY Adirondack, located in Queensbury New York. At the time, the school had a partnership with VTSU Castleton where you could get in-state tuition if you went for your bachelor’s degree. After receiving her associate’s degree in creative writing at SUNY, she headed to Castleton, but this time in Communications.  

Once DeCamilla was two years deep in creative writing, she realized that it was unrealistic for her to pay bills by writing crime fiction. That’s when she found the communications program, but she wasn’t sure the news world was for her. 

“I don’t wanna tell someone else’s story,” DeCamilla said with passion. 

With a little time and various classes, DeCamilla realized that someone’s story can be just as much fun, if not more, than the stories she could spin in her head. 

She started off great, driving to Castleton each day from her house, located near the Vermont-New York border. Then came COVID, and she was forced to finish classes online. 

Thanksgiving that year looked a little different than usual for DeCamilla and students, Marty Kelly, Jake McCarthy, and Sophia Buckley-Clement. 

Not a lot of people were willing to volunteer their time to personally fill cars of those less fortunate with holiday goods, but DeCamilla, while seven months pregnant, was one of four who did. 

“I remember her out by the road with her big belly and waving people in,” said Blow, who at the time was leading the holiday drive as part of a Media Ethics class. “It made an impact on me.”

Marty Kelly, current SGA graduate assistant at VTSU Castleton, DeCamilla’s former Media Ethics classmate and current Strategic Marketing Management classmate, remembers her being the first Castleton student he got to see in person that year. 

“It said a lot about her that she was willing to drive an hour out of her way to volunteer with a baby at home and being pregnant,” Kelly said. 

But DeCamilla is always putting others before herself, including student Lance Robinson, from Blow’s Media Writing class that produced the book “COVID Chronicles.” DeCamilla was part of the College Steps program and would meet with Robinson on Zoom once a week to help him stay on track with assignments. 

“I just always want to help and give back,” DeCamilla said.

DeCamilla, who was not enrolled in the class, was asked by Blow if she wanted to be included in the book because of how driven Blow said she was. She jumped at the chance and wrote about her old car and the drives to escape she took with her son during COVID

When the end of 2021 finally rolled around it was time for DeCamilla to graduate—but she wasn’t alone. Three weeks prior, she had birth to her second child, Monarch. 

“I was so sad we couldn’t have an in-person graduation, I wanted to bring this little nugget,” DeCamilla said, while holding up her now 3-year-old daughter who was wearing a yellow and black sunflower dress with Band-aids on both knees from falling earlier that day. 

But her graduation wasn’t where her education ended. The now 29-year-old is back at VTSU Castleton working at her MBA in business communication.

“She is a nontraditional student but was always very focused when coming back because she loves getting the most out of everything,” said Talbott. 

Career

Toward the end of her first stint at Castleton DeCamilla got an internship at the Chaffee Art Center in Rutland, Vermont. 

The director of the Art Center later offered her a makeshift position because of how much she loved the neon haired bubbly gal. DeCamilla wasn’t sure what to do, so she went back to waiting tables.

About a month back into the world of rude customers, under tippers, and cleaning up disgusting messes, DeCamilla received the text that would shape her whole career. 

Imessage from Dave Blow: “Hey, there’s an opening at the Post-Star.” 

“Ugh, I don’t wanna live in Glens Falls forever, and I don’t even know if I wanna work in news,” DeCamilla said re-enacting her initial thoughts. 

Despite the hesitation, she applied for a reporter position. 

After only a week, it was clear to DeCamilla that her heart was in the news. 

Later into the 2023 year, DeCamilla set a goal for herself; “Within the next five years, I want to break into broadcasting,” she said. “That was weird because that had never crossed my mind before.”

Her professors weren’t surprised.

“She always sets high goals for herself. It is fun and exciting to see her journey in what she is doing,” said Davis-Boyd.

After just six months, DeCamilla got her current job as digital content producer at WRGB CBS6 News in Albany and was soon pregnant with child number three.

Daily tasks now include website reporting, working ahead on projects, some managerial tasks for the assignment desk. But she wanted more. 

“I wanted a passion project,” DeCamilla said. 

In April 2024, Evidence Room was born and what started off as something she was going to dabble with, is now a successful podcast with 23 episodes focusing on the nitty gritty of cold cases. 

“I call it my fourth child,” DeCamilla said with pride. 

Family

Episode one of Evidence Room came out the same week DeCamilla’s father passed away. 

The strong mother of three and new fiancée did not stop when things got hard, but Instead, she overcame.

“I’m gonna make him proud. I like to think that the Evidence Room is for him,” DeCamilla said, through tears. 

Her father knew about her podcast and even though he couldn’t watch it on YouTube, she knows he is somewhere seeing it.

The mother of three children, Cire, Monarch and Kenzo, also recently got engaged to her longtime partner Stakk M Kennedy.

Before meeting Kennedy, the single mom at the time would walk down the street while pushing Cire in his stroller. It was to her surprise that Kennedy used to see her and knew that someday “she was gonna be his girl.” 

In December of 2018, DeCamilla and Kennedy officially met through mutual friends. After a month of hanging out and becoming each other’s companions, they both knew there was something more there than a friendship.  

Fast forward to the end of 2021, when DeCamilla and Kennedy had their first child together, Monarch.  

DeCamilla’s first child, Cire, is 8-and-a-half years old and known as the family politician. He will debate with anyone until he gets them to agree with him. 

“I never met a young child so political with their answers,” DeCamilla added. 

Cire is from her previous relationship. She met his father when she was 12 and had their baby boy at age 21. Her first tattoo was the father’s name and was placed on her left shoulder. Now, it’s covered by a big, beautiful, yellow flower that took three sessions to complete. 

“That tattoo was the last pain I had to feel from that relationship. Now I have this big beautiful thing, and an amazing boy to replace all the bad memories,” DeCamilla said, giving a tour of her tattoos. 

Monarch, 3, the middle baby. The sweet-mannered toddler has an incredible love for animals and already knows she wants to be a vet when she grows up. 

“People come up to me and say that she is the sweetest kid. She will come up and rub your face while telling you how beautiful you are,” DeCamllia said. 

Kenzo is the youngest at 2. He is “out of this world smart,” can hold complete sentences, state the whole alphabet, and tell you that his favorite shape, the triangle, has three sides with three angles, DeCamilla said. 

Kenzo also happens to be the last of DeCamilla’s children…ever.

She had a medical scare when he was born, with both of them in danger. Kenzo is now known in the family as being the happiest baby ever.

“We always say how he is the definition of just happy to be here, literally,” DeCamilla shared. 

DeCamilla explained how one of her favorite things that she carried into her motherhood was a favorite childhood memory of watching movies as a family in the living room. 

“I’m like come on guys, let’s watch a movie. Then we all pile on in my bed,” DeCamilla said while smiling at her children. 

The family of five lives in a three-bedroom apartment between Albany and Saratoga. 

The white doors of the kids’ rooms are decorated with a theme of their choice. Monarch’s door is covered in pink and purple stickers matching the color of the LED lights that cover her bedroom walls, surrounding her room full of toys. 

“I have been told it looks like a toy store,” DeCamilla said of not only the bedroom bu the whole house. 

While DeCamilla answered questions, Monarch and Kenzo were on her lap, screaming for attention. “The Nightmare Before Christmas” movie was on TV, DeCamilla’s phone is repeatedly buzzing with work messages. 

“I apologize for the caffeine induced giggles,” DeCamilla said. 

Kennedy walks into the bedroom to finally save DeCamilla from their screaming children. 

“What’s poppin?” he said.

Now, finally getting relief from the piercing screams of her overly tired kids, she said through a yawn, “I’m going to try and take a nap while these children rest. I feel like I’m 29 going on 45.”