Dax Tejera, Executive Producer of the ABC News flagship public affairs program “This Week,” died in New York City on Friday, December 23. He was 37.
While Dax's life was cut short, he lived the time he was given to the fullest. He married a woman who shared his passion for life and commitment to family, fathered two beautiful girls and rose to the peak of a profession he revered.
A proud Miami native, Dax attended Palmer Trinity School, serving as senior class president and graduating at the top of his class. He then attended Dartmouth College, graduating cum laude with a B.A. in History and Government in 2007. It was at Dartmouth where Dax got his start in news, serving as the publisher of the school paper, The Dartmouth.
Dax began his career as an NBC News Associate, quickly rising through the ranks as a researcher in Los Angeles and assignment editor in New York. He went on to launch MSNBC’s “Jansing & Co” and “Now with Alex Wagner,” and served as the network’s primary breaking news producer, coordinating the field coverage of major stories ranging from the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary to the death of Osama bin Laden. As the Executive Producer of “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos,” the award-winning newsmagazine program on Fusion, and in collaboration with HBO, Dax and his wife, Veronica, produced a prescient documentary film called “Hate Rising,” focusing on the rise of white supremacists and the alt-right. He executive produced multiple interviews with major presidential contenders, three presidential candidate forums, seven hours of election night coverage, two weeks of convention coverage and special reports on each primary and caucus night. He was instrumental in Ramos’s courageous questioning of then-candidate Donald Trump.
It was clear to all who knew him that Dax was a rising star in his industry and pretty soon, the world would know as well. At just 35, newly married and with a baby on the way, Dax began his run as Executive Producer of the ABC News Sunday show “This Week,” leading it to No. 1 among Adults 25-54 for the first time in six years.
Dax traveled the country and the world as a journalist, producing special reports from the Syrian border, Hong Kong, Paris, Havana, Davos, Israel, Rwanda and more. He led remote-anchored broadcasts, covering presidential summits in Singapore and Helsinki. And he covered the biggest news of recent times: the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential election and the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. His last assignments abroad included traveling to Ukraine with Martha Raddatz, just as war was breaking out, and to the United Kingdom to cover the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Somewhere along the way he also managed to complete a fellowship with Columbia University’s Punch Sulzberger Program.
While Dax chose to work behind the camera, he could have been in front of it. Handsome, sharp and magnetic, Dax was a generous host who meticulously produced every moment on and off the screen. Dax had a unique way of making the quotidian extraordinary. He pursued interests with passion, sharing his joie de vivre with friends and family while approaching life and work with tenacity and focus. He was a consummate gentleman, inclined toward the elegant and the timeless, and added both flair and gravitas to every situation.
Strong willed, Dax led with his own compass. He was a devout Episcopalian, attending mass at St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House every Sunday with his family. He treasured family and poured his boundless energy into the roles he deemed most sacred: loving husband, doting father, devoted brother, faithful son, caring cousin and loyal friend.
He is survived by his wife, Veronica, their daughters, two-year-old Sofia and six-month-old Ella, his parents, Gloria and Richard Tejera, his brother, Justin, aunts and uncles, Maria and Jeffrey St. George, Patricia and Alejandro Chediak, cousins, Bianca Chisholm, Zaba St. George Castro, Alejandro M. Chediak, and Daniela Chediak of Miami, Florida and in Vero Beach, Florida his aunts and uncles, Charles Gibbons, Kevin Gibbons, Heather Lowther, Madge Dobeck, and the larger extended Gibbons family. He is predeceased by his uncles, Darby, Mark, and Carter. Dax will be laid to rest in Miami under the Tejera headstone following a church service at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Coral Gables on Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 11 A.M. There will also be a memorial service at Saint Thomas Church in Manhattan on Friday, January 13, 2023 at 2 P.M.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests a donation to Sofia and Ella’s education fund.
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