Joie Chen (she/her)

Joie Chen brings a wide range of experience as a national and international television journalist to the Poynter Institute, where she serves as an adjunct.

Chen is best known for her decade-long tenure as a prime-time anchor at CNN and CNN International, where she also anchored multiple talk and town hall programs. She was part of CNN’s coverage of politics, global conflicts, natural disasters and many major news events, including the Olympic Park bombing for which she received her first national Emmy.

She is a veteran observer of Washington, DC, having been a CBS News Correspondent at the White House and on Capitol Hill. During her time at CBS, she covered multiple presidential summit meetings, political campaigns and candidates for the CBS Evening News, Face the Nation and CBS Sunday Morning. She also reported outside the Beltway, spending weeks in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and winning a second national Emmy for coverage of the DC Sniper attacks.

Chen was part of the launch team for Al Jazeera America as Anchor of the network’s prime-time flagship program “America Tonight”. She was also a Senior Correspondent for the program, filing reports from more than three dozen states, Japan and the Philippines. Chen reported extensively from Ferguson, Missouri after the police killing of Mike Brown. She was an Emmy finalist in writing for her documentary exploring the connections between Emmett Till’s lynching and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Outside the newsroom, Chen has been involved with several cutting-edge projects in content creation. She led teams developing and launching branded content newsrooms for non-profit organizations. In addition, she worked with CNN’s branded content division “Courageous Studios” to create and host an innovative business series aired on multiple network platforms.

She also served as a contributing host and anchor for AtlanticLive, the branded events division of the Atlantic Media group.

Chen has long been involved in journalism education and supporting emerging journalists. She served on the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC). Most recently, she was Director of Washington Programs for Northwestern University’s Medill School. She is a frequent speaker about career development, diversity in
newsrooms, specialized news coverage and other topics with university and general audiences.

At Poynter, Chen has served as an executive coach for women leaders in the Power Up program, and as an adviser in the year-long Poynter Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship.

She has served on a number of diversity and inclusion panels and is most proud of her 20-year involvement with JCamp, a program for multi-ethnic and multi-cultural high school students. She is an active member of the Asian American Journalists Association and was founding president of AAJA’s Atlanta Chapter.