Betty Nguyen

Betty Nguyen (born 1 September 1974) is an American award-winning news anchor and journalist, currently working with WPIX in New York City. She had previously worked with NBC News, MSNBC, CBS News, and CNN. At CBS News, she was the news anchor for CBS This Morning Saturday, correspondent for The Early Show, and anchored the CBS Morning News.

Over her career, she has interviewed several notable newsmakers and celebrities, including the Dalai Lama, George W. Bush, Sir Richard Branson, Lenny Kravitz, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Usher, Charles Barkley, Michael Douglas, William Shatner, and Christian Louboutin, among many others.

Betty Nguyen was born on September 1, 1974, in Saigon, Vietnam. She is of Vietnamese and Scottish-American descent. In April 1975, when she was not even a year old, she and her family fled Vietnam and emigrated to the United States during the fall of Saigon. The family lived in three different refugee camps before settling down in Texas. 

About her father, she has said on CNN: 

He was an American serviceman who fell in love with a Vietnamese college student. They married and had me, a child who was given life, when so many were losing theirs in the war. We fled Vietnam, crammed into a packed C-130 cargo plane. It was stepping into the unknown. Nothing was guaranteed except that turning back was not an option. And that meant leaving behind my grandparents…As hard as it was, fleeing not only saved my life, it gave me a new one, in a place called America.

Nguyen grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at Austin. She was a cheerleader during her younger days and a member of the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority in college. Nguyen graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism.

Early years

Nguyen began her career as a morning anchor and reporter at KWTX-TV, the CBS affiliate in Waco, Texas. Then, she was an anchor at KTVT-TV, the CBS affiliate in Dallas, where she covered numerous breaking news events, including the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.

During her tenure with the CBS affiliate, she received an Associated Press Award for breaking news coverage.

CNN

After leaving KTVT-TV, Nguyen joined CNN in 2004, where she anchored the weekend morning edition of CNN Newsroom. She was with CNN for six years, until 2010. 

In 2005-06, she contributed to the network's coverage of Hurricane Katrina that earned her a George Foster Peabody Award and her coverage of the 2006 tsunami in South Asia won her an Alfred I. du Pont award.

In 2007, Nguyen traveled to Africa to cover the presidential elections in Sierra Leone, the political and economic crises in Zimbabwe, and apartheid-era prosecutions in South Africa.

In 2008, she reported from Texas during Hurricane Ike. The same year, she also went undercover in Myanmar, one of the world’'s most secretive countries, for a series of exclusive reports exposing a lack of aid following Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 140,000 people. 

In 2009, Nguyen traveled to Constitución, Mexico, to cover Hurricane Jimena. 

She also anchored the network's coverage of major news events, including the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI's first papal visit to the United States in 2008, the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the death of Pope John Paul II in April 2005, the London bombing attacks in July 2005, the Iraqi elections in January 2005 and the June 2004 handover of sovereignty to Iraq.

CBS

In 2010, she became a network anchor and correspondent for CBS News. She was a news anchor for CBS This Morning Saturday, correspondent for The Early Show, and anchored the CBS Morning News. 

During her tenure with CBS, she was also a substitute anchor on the weekend edition of the CBS Evening News and a Special Correspondent for Entertainment Tonight. She covered the 2012 Presidential election, the 2011 earthquake in Japan, the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Royal wedding, the Arab spring, and the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

NBC

In 2013, Nguyen joined NBC, where she anchored Early Today on NBC and later, First Look on MSNBC. She was also a correspondent for the Today Show. While with NBC, she covered the terrorist attacks in France, the Ebola outbreak, the missing Malaysia planes, the Boston Marathon bombing, the war in Syria, the election of Pope Francis, the birth of Prince George, and the death of Nelson Mandela.

PIX11

Nguyen became the new co-anchor of the PIX11 Morning News at WPIX-TV on June 19, 2017, succeeding Sukanya Krishnan, who left the station after 17 years.

Other work

Nguyen also worked as a freelance correspondent for E! Entertainment Network briefly during the 2003 California gubernatorial election. 

She has hosted several specials and was featured as a reporter on episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Nguyen can be seen in the archive footage of Spike Lee's 2006-2007 TV documentary series When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts—a documentary that examines the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Also seen in the archive footage of this documentary are Anderson Cooper, Russel L. Honoré, and Dick Cheney among many others.

In July 2015 Nguyen announced she was pregnant with her first child. She also mentioned that she had previously suffered a miscarriage.

Nguyen established a foundation called "Help the Hungry" in 2000 and every year travels to Vietnam with her family to deliver food, medicine, and other life-changing supplies.

Nguyen is a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, Dallas Mavericks, and Texas Longhorns.

• Co-founder of Help the Hungry
• Member of the Asian American Journalists Association

• In 2007, Nguyen was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as the first Vietnamese-American to anchor a national television news broadcast in the United States.
• The Betty Nguyen Scholarship in Journalism was created in 2007 at her alma mater, University of Texas, to assist students pursuing a career in broadcast journalism.
• In 2008, she received the Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award.
• In 2008, Maxim.com named her as one of "TV´s 10 Hottest News Anchors".
• In 2011, she was listed as one of "The 10 Most Stylish Anchors & Reporters" by The Huffington Post.
• In 2015, Nguyen was inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame.

Awards

• 2003 Regional Emmy award for "Outstanding Noon Newscast"
• 2003 Great Women of Texas: Women of Influence Honoree
• 2003 Legacy of Women Award