Reardon was AFTRA’s final national president and first co-president of SAG-AFTRA, with Ken Howard. A love of performing emerged early: As a stage-struck 14-year-old, she auditioned for Guys and Dolls at all-male Wabash College and started working with the drama program. She appeared in college productions at Lawrence University and then the University of Wyoming, attaining a B.A. in drama. She moved to New York and began her professional career when she was hired for the TV soap opera The Secret Storm, followed by commercials, TV voiceovers, radio commercials, industrial films and narration as well as New York and regional theater. She appeared in multiple productions for the South Jersey Regional Theatre, including a starring turn as Billie Dawn in the classic comedy Born Yesterday.
In a 2003 interview, she recalled: “I started doing commercials and was very fortunate to start making a living at that. In the early ’90s, Kmart had a Shopping Families campaign. They developed a stable of 24 or 25 actors, sort of a repertory company. We shot commercials every month. It was an amazing experience. I must have shot 150 commercials in three years.”
Her AFTRA Board service began with the New York Local in 1997 and the National Board in 1998. She served as third vice president of the New York Local from 2001 — 2003, second vice president from 2003 – 2009 and was also elected president of the New York Local in 2003. Elected AFTRA national president in 2007 at the 61st AFTRA National Convention in Philadelphia, she was re-elected in 2009 (when she was also awarded George Heller Memorial Gold Card No. 53 at the AFTRA National Convention in Chicago) and 2011. During her national presidency, she was national chair of the Network Code, Television and Radio Commercials and Non-Broadcast/Industrial/Educational contracts negotiations, sat on the Arts & Entertainment committee of the New York State Federation of the AFL-CIO, and was a board member of the Union Leadership Institute of Cornell Institute of Labor Relations. A devoted proponent of merger with Screen Actors Guild, she was involved with all three merger attempts, the last of which succeeded in 2012. She and Ken Howard then became the first co-presidents of SAG-AFTRA.