Soledad O'Brien
Soledad O'Brien (b. September 19, 1966) is an American television journalist. She co-anchors American Morning, the marquee morning newscast on the North American CNN television service, with Miles O'Brien; their common surname is a coincidence.
Her father is Australian, but of Irish decent. Her mother is black and from Cuba. Hence, O'Brien is part Irish, part Hispanic and part African-American. Her parents met at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland in 1958. When they married the next year, interracial marriage was illegal in Maryland -- as it was in all southern states until the United States Supreme Court decided in Loving v. Virginia (1967) that interracial marriage bans were unconstitutional -- so they married in Washington, DC and moved to St. James, New York, where Soledad was born. She grew up in another Long Island town, Smithtown, New York.
She is based in New York City. O'Brien began anchoring CNN's flagship morning program in July 2003, when she joined the network.
O'Brien came to CNN from NBC News. where she had anchored Weekend Today since July 1999. During that time, she contributed reports for the weekday Today Show and for weekend editions of NBC Nightly News, and covered such notable stories as John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane crash and the 1990s school shootings in Colorado and Oregon. In 2003, she covered the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and later anchored NBC's weekend coverage of the War in Iraq.
Before Weekend Today, O'Brien anchored MSNBC's award-winning technology program The Site and the cable network's weekend morning show. O'Brien joined NBC News in 1991, and was based in New York as a field producer for the Nightly News and Today.
Before working at NBC, O'Brien served three years as a local reporter and bureau chief for San Francisco NBC affiliate KRON. She began her career as an associate producer and news writer at WBZ-TV, then the NBC affiliate in Boston.
O'Brien's work has been honored several times, including a local Emmy for her work co-hosting the Discovery Channel's The Know Zone. She has been named to People's 50 Most Beautiful in 2001 and to People en Espanol's 50 Most Beautiful in 2004. She was named to Irish American Magazine's "Top 100 Irish Americans" on two occasions.
She is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She serves on the board of directors of The Harlem School for the Arts.
She is a graduate of Harvard University, with a degree in English language and American literature.
O'Brien is married to Brad Raymond, an investment banker, and has two daughters, Sofia (born 2000) and Cecilia (born 2002), and twin sons, Charlie and Jackson (born 2004).
External link
- Soledad O'Brien, CNN.com biography
Sources
- Soledad O'Brien... Unofficially - Biographical Information
- Hispanic Magazine Online - Biographical Information
- Loving Day - verification of interracial marriage bans