Speaker: Kyra Phillips, News Anchor and Correspondent, CNN
Watch the videoLocation: John Argue Plaza
Kyra Phillips is a news anchor and correspondent for CNN/U.S. Based in the network's world headquarters in Atlanta, Phillips anchors the weekday newscast Live From.
Phillips has covered a wide range of breaking news, including the 2003 war in Iraq, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, CNN's Election 2000 and Election 2002 coverage, and the Elian Gonzalez custody controversy. In 2003, Phillips reported as an embedded journalist aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln for CNN during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
In January 2002, she spent a month on location in Antarctica, working on a documentary about the science, the danger and the life on Earth's most frigid continent. Phillips traced the steps of famous explorers, including those of Sir Ernest Shackleton. While there, she also built and slept in an igloo, rappelled down glaciers, introduced viewers to rare penguin colonies and revealed some of the continent's most interesting scientific discoveries. In 2002, Phillips became the first female journalist to fly in an F-14 air-to-air combat training mission over the Persian Gulf. For a full month Phillips produced exclusive reports on the U.S. Navy's reconnaissance missions from the P-3 aircraft and maritime interdiction operations from the USS Paul Hamilton. For the first time ever, television audiences got a look inside the training of Naval Special Warfare, the Navy's Special Operations Command. Phillips also observed Navy SEALS and Special Warfare Combatant Crewman training for a possible conflict with Iraq. Phillips has extensive police, SWAT and weapons training. She also has reported on and participated in specialized aviation training with the Navy's elite TOPGUN School.
In 2001, Phillips was the first network correspondent to gain exclusive access to CAG 9, the elite Navy airwing, as it prepared for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Her reports took viewers inside the cockpits of the most advanced strike fighter jets in the world and into training as sailors and officers got ready to go overseas and fight the war on terror.
Before joining CNN in October 1999, Phillips served as an investigative reporter in the Special Assignment Unit for KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. From 1994-1995 she was a weekend anchor and reporter for WDSU-TV in New Orleans. Previously, she anchored the weekend newscasts and reported for WLUK-TV in Green Bay, Wis. Phillips also has served as morning anchor for KAMC-TV in Lubbock, Texas, and as a field producer for CNN-Telemundo in Washington, D.C.
Phillips has won four Emmy awards, two Edward R. Murrow awards for investigative reporting, and in 1997, the Associated Press named her Reporter of the Year. Additionally, she has won numerous Golden Microphones and other honors. Phillips' investigation into how a convicted murderer could purchase personal information about children triggered national legislation and earned her the Bill Stout Memorial Award for enterprise reporting.
Since 1992, she has been a Big Sister with national Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America mentoring program. Phillips earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Southern California.