President’s Award: Amna Nawaz
Amna Nawaz is co-anchor of PBS NewsHour. She has also hosted three seasons of the primetime PBS series, “Beyond the Canvas,” which profiles some of the world’s leading artists, musicians, and creators.
A former anchor and correspondent at ABC news, and a foreign correspondent for NBC news, her work on the Jan. 6 attacks and global plastic pollution were honored with Peabody Awards. In 2023, she was part of NewsHour’s team honored with another Peabody Award for its coverage of the gun violence epidemic in America, including her on-the-ground coverage of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
She remains a NBC News and MSNBC contributor.
ABOUT THE WINNER: When Amna Nawaz became the co-anchor of PBS NewsHour this year, she made history as the first Asian and Muslim American to sit in the flagship program’s anchor chair. For her boundary-breaking work reporting on the world’s biggest stories, AAJA is honored to present Amna with the organization’s President’s Award.
Prior to joining PBS NewsHour in April 2018, Amna was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, and served as foreign correspondent and the Islamabad bureau chief at NBC News. After 9/11, she was the first foreign journalist to gain access to North Waziristan, which was then the hub of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, which was launched in 2014 to elevate stories from America’s fastest-growing and most diverse population.
She has covered major news events extensively both domestically and abroad, including the inaugurations of three presidents, the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol, the mass shooting in an Uvalde, Texas elementary school, and the Sept. 11 attacks. She has also interviewed several heads of states, including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. In 2019, she moderated the Democratic presidential debate, a first for an Asian American.
The first-generation American daughter of Pakistani parents, Amna was born and raised in Virginia. Amna earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she captained the varsity field hockey team and studied abroad at the University of Zimbabwe. She later earned her master’s degree from the London School of Economics.