2011 Conference Speakers

Soledad O'Brien

CNN Anchor and Special Correspondent

Soledad O’Brien is an anchor and special correspondent for CNN/U.S. Since joining the network in 2003, O’Brien has reported breaking news from around the globe and produced award-winning, record-breaking and critically acclaimed documentaries on the most important stories facing the world today, including, Black in America, Almighty Debt and Gary and Tony Have a Baby.

She has also reported for the CNN documentary, Words That Changed a Nation, featuring a never-before-seen look at Dr. King’s private writings and notes, and investigated his assassination in Eyewitness to Murder: The King Assassination.  Her Children of the Storm project and One Crime at a Time documentary demonstrate O’Brien’s continued commitment to covering stories out of New Orleans.

In 2010, she released her critically-acclaimed memoir, The Next Big Story: My Journey through the Land of Possibilities, which chronicles her biggest reporting moments and how her upbringing and background have influenced these experiences.

O’Brien has received numerous awards and recognition from several national, community and media organizations including the National Association of Black Journalists, Edward R. Murrow and the NAACP.  In 2008, O’Brien was the first recipient of The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Goodermote Humanitarian Award for her reporting efforts on the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asia tsunami. O'Brien was part of the coverage teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody Award for its Katrina coverage and an Alfred I. duPont Award for its coverage of the tsunami.

Soledad O’Brien is a graduate of Harvard University and currently lives with her husband and four children in Manhattan, New York.