One look at Moira Noriega’s resume and you could tell she’s a multi-tasker. The beauty is that she credits Sachem for her ability to juggle multiple high-level priorities at once.
At Sachem she was involved in various clubs, but really appreciates the arts and her development with music at a young age.
“I’m a huge Sachem Arrows fans period, but our music program was stellar, one of the best in the country,” she said. “It was just as competitive as athletics at Sachem. That inspired the confidence. If you can rise to the top of that heap you can rise to the top of anything.”
She played piano as a kid, was a lead in musicals and also decided to join band under the guidance of the now legendary Mr. Cruz.
She remembers performing in “Fiddler on the Roof” at Tamarac Elementary, and in “Annie” at Seneca, or playing Anita in “West Side Story” at Sachem South.
A 1989 graduate of Sachem, Noriega attended SUNY Fredonia for music first and finally settled at Florida International in its international relations program.
Her career has gone from one level to the next. First at Bacardi as a communications coordinator dealing with product placement, then at Walt Disney in production and acquisition, and next to Nickelodeon for production and development on shows like “Dora The Explorer” and “Blues Clues”.
She also has held producing roles at FUSE TV, MTV Networks, as Director of Cross Platform Product Content at Music Choice, as well as upfront execution for NBC Universal’s Oxygen network. Currently she is head of reality for the first and now second season of La Voz Kids, the sister to The Voice for Children in Spanish, which is the No. 1 reality show on Spanish television.
“We had a fearless attitude that we were the best when we were growing up,” Noriega said of her Sachem days.
She credits the change of buildings every couple of years from elementary school to middle school to high school, once at South and then finally North, as a strong point in her educational experience.
“You consistently needed to adapt to everything,” she said. “Unknowingly we were thrown in these situations.”
She adapts just fine to the new and ever-changing landscape of her professional life as well.
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro