Amna Nawaz may not be a household name for many Pakistani Americans, despite being one of them, she has remained a trailblazer on the American journalism scene. Amna, who’s served as PBS NewsHour’s Senior National Correspondent and Primary Substitute Anchor since 2019, has been named the nightly news broadcast’s Chief Correspondent, and on Fridays, will serve as the program’s White House Correspondent.
For those who may know little about Amna, she is the daughter of Shuja Nawaz, a noted Pakistani American author, analyst, and Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council.
Amna Nawaz joined the NewsHour in April 2018 as a correspondent and has since co-moderated PBS NewsHour’s Democratic Primary Debate with POLITICO in December 2019, served as host for the first two seasons of NewsHour’s primetime arts series Beyond the Canvas, and hosted the primetime documentary The Plastic Problem, for which she is a Peabody Award recipient for its preceding nightly broadcast series. In this capacity, she will co-anchor and anchor some primetime and other special coverage and continue to serve as the broadcast’s Primary Substitute Anchor and Host of Beyond the Canvas.
Nawaz’s reporting at the NewsHour has been wide-ranging, spanning politics, foreign affairs, education, climate change, culture and sports. In recent months and under the Biden Administration, she has interviewed CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, and former Biden Administration senior advisor Andy Slavitt. During the Trump Administration, Nawaz’s immigration reporting took her to multiple border communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. She’s investigated the impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, including following the journey of a single toddler as she left her home in Mexico, was separated from her family at the U.S. border, and later reunited with her family several weeks later. She also regularly covers issues around detention, refugees and asylum, and migrant children in U.S. government custody.
According to PBS, Nawaz has interviewed numerous international newsmakers — including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Brazilian leader Eduardo Bolsonaro; lawmakers and Trump administration officials – including then-ICE Director Mark Morgan’s first interview after President Trump announced mass raids across the U.S., Acting Secretary of DHS Kevin McAleenan, and former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in her first interview since leaving the Trump administration; and influential voices including Reba McEntire, Gloria Estefan, and Dev Patel. Domestically, her reporting has taken her to Appalachia to cover healthcare and the economy, the Pacific Northwest to cover gentrification and discrimination in housing, and communities across the country to take the political pulse of the nation. Internationally, she’s traveled to Brazil to report on climate change from within the Amazon, and the Venezuelan refugee crisis.
Prior to joining the NewsHour, she was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s digital coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as a foreign correspondent at NBC News, reporting from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and the broader region. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, built to elevate the voices of America’s fastest-growing population.