Amna Nawaz serves as co-anchor and co-managing editor of PBS News Hour. She joined the program in April 2018 after working as an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, where she led breaking news coverage and anchored the network’s livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, Nawaz was a foreign correspondent and Islamabad Bureau Chief at NBC News. She also founded and served as the first managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, created in 2014 to elevate stories from the United States’ fastest-growing and most diverse population.

At PBS News Hour, Nawaz has reported from the White House, across the United States, and around the world. Her coverage spans a wide range of topics, including politics, immigration, foreign affairs, education, gun violence, criminal justice reform, climate change, culture, and sports. In addition to her work at News Hour, Nawaz serves as a contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.

Throughout her career, Nawaz has covered some of the most consequential events in recent history. Her reporting includes the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, and the U.S. elections and inaugurations of Presidents Joe Biden, Donald J. Trump, and Barack Obama. She has also covered Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the September 11th attacks.

Nawaz has conducted interviews with numerous heads of state and international leaders, including Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. She has also interviewed a wide range of U.S. lawmakers and administration officials, among them Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Beyond politics, her interviews include acclaimed director Ava DuVernay, actor Riz Ahmed, WNBA star Sue Bird, and country singer Reba McEntire.

She has received four Peabody Awards as part of the NewsHour team for its coverage of major national and global stories: in 2024, for reporting from Israel following the October 7th Hamas attack; in 2023, for coverage from Uvalde, Texas, as part of a series on gun violence; in 2021, for live reporting from outside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th insurrection; and in 2019, for an in-depth series on global plastic pollution.

Among her documentary work are Raising the Future (2021), a film on America’s childcare crisis, and Life After Lockup (2022), which followed four formerly incarcerated individuals navigating re-entry into society. Nawaz also hosted the 2020 criminal justice podcast Broken Justice, which was named a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Awards. In 2021, she hosted The Longest Year, a podcast series examining the personal and societal changes brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nawaz has also hosted three seasons of the primetime PBS series Beyond the Canvas, featuring profiles and interviews with world-renowned artists, musicians, and creatives.

In 2019, Nawaz became the first Asian American and the first Muslim American to moderate a U.S. presidential debate. During her time at ABC News, she hosted the documentary Roberts County: A Year in the Most Pro-Trump Town, chronicling the lives of four families during President Trump’s first year in office. She also hosted the ABC News Radio podcast series Uncomfortable, which featured long-form conversations with thought leaders on divisive issues in American society.

While at NBC News, Nawaz became the first foreign journalist granted access to North Waziristan—then considered the global hub of Al Qaeda and the Taliban—while pregnant with her first daughter.

She was a Fall 2021 Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asian American Journalists Association, the South Asian Journalists Association, and the Inter-American Dialogue.

Nawaz’s work has earned her numerous honors. In 2024, she received both the Diversity Woman Media’s Pioneer Award and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group’s Breaking Barriers in Journalism Award. In 2023, she was named an A100 honoree by Gold House. She was recognized with the Vision Award by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies and the Media Award from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in 2022. She was also honored with the Excellence in Media Award from the American Muslim Institution in 2018, and received an Emmy Award in 2009 as part of the NBC News special Inside the Obama White House.

A first-generation American born to Pakistani parents and raised in Virginia, Nawaz earned her 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. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area with her husband, Paul, and their two daughters.