Lisa Ling: Investigative Journalist
Journalist and keynote speaker Lisa Ling delivers powerful insight into global and domestic social issues through fearless storytelling, investigative reporting, and decades of frontline media experience.
Quick Facts:
- Highlights:
- Executive producer and host of CNN’s This Is Life with Lisa Ling
- Former host and executive producer of Our America on OWN
- Veteran investigative journalist reporting from dozens of countries
- Covered addiction, extremism, trafficking, war, and human rights
- Formats: Journalist keynote speaker, moderator, investigative media host
- Audiences: Organizations, conferences, universities, and leaders seeking insight on media, social issues, global affairs, and ethical storytelling
- Outcomes:
- Deeper understanding of complex social and cultural issues
- Insight into investigative journalism and responsible storytelling
- Perspective on empathy, leadership, and creating informed dialogue
- Travels from: Los Angeles, CA
- **Fee range: $50,001 - $75,000
Talent Services
Keynote Topics:
The Importance of a Global Perspective
Lisa recounts stories that profoundly changed her life and talks about how travel and going beyond one’s comfort zone is wholly transformative, making one smarter, more well rounded and more marketable.
Open Heart, Open Mind
In today’s culture of sound bite news, many important issues get overlooked, if they get covered at all. Lisa Ling has dedicated herself to shedding light on stories impacting the world in which we live.
In her presentations, complete with a lively Q&A session, Lisa shares a collection of stories from her over 20 year career in media that have profoundly affected her outlook on life.
Her hope is that through her experiences people may be provoked to think about things differently and allow themselves to expand their horizons
Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride
Rituals of Womanhood
Co-authored by Lisa Ling and anthropologist Joanne B. Eicher, the National Geographic book Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride is a compelling exploration of all things female.
Each chapter reveals the actions that connect a woman with herself, her family, her community, and other women.
Ling presents the images and stories behind the book in this fascinating look at the historical, cultural, and emotional impact of women’s rituals.
Talent Short Bio
Lisa Ling is an award-winning journalist, executive producer, and keynote speaker known for uncovering stories that are often overlooked, misunderstood, or intentionally ignored. She is the executive producer and host of This Is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN, where she examines complex social issues across America, from addiction and extremism to identity, faith, and inequality.
Before joining CNN, Lisa spent five seasons as executive producer and host of Our America on OWN, embedding herself in communities grappling with heroin addiction, poverty, underage sex trafficking, wrongful incarceration, and the long-term effects of war. Her reporting is immersive, empathetic, and grounded in trust built with people whose voices are rarely amplified.
Lisa’s career spans decades of frontline journalism. She has reported from dozens of countries for National Geographic Explorer, ABC News Nightline, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, covering global human rights issues including sexual violence in conflict zones, religious extremism, gang violence, and cultural oppression. She began her career at age 21 as a correspondent for Channel One News, covering the civil war in Afghanistan.
Read Full Bio
Lisa Ling is the executive producer and host of This is Life with Lisa Ling on CNN. Lisa explores the scourge prescription pill addiction in Utah, the recent influx of women in North Dakota’s boomtown and a town in the rural Midwest where young men aspire to be priests.
For five seasons prior, Ling executive produced and hosted Our America on OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Lisa embedded in a Midwest town ravaged by an onslaught of heroin, got exclusive access inside an anti-gay religious movement, witnessed the manifestation of PTSD in returning veterans of war and went undercover to investigate the under-age sex trafficking of minors in the nation’s capitol.
She has also profiled Americans living beneath the poverty line for the first time and people serving unimaginably lengthy prison sentences for crimes they did not commit.
As the former field correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and contributor to ABC News’ Nightline and National Geographic’s Explorer, Lisa Ling has reported from dozens of countries, covering stories about gang rape in the Congo, bride burning in India, the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang in Central America, among other issues that are too often ignored.
Lisa got her start in journalism as a correspondent for Channel One News, where she covered the civil war in Afghanistan at 21 years of age as well as stories in dozens of countries around the world. She later went on to become a co-host of ABC Daytime’s hit show The View, which won its first daytime Emmy during her time at the show.
Lisa Ling is the co-author of Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood and Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home, which she penned with her sister, Laura.
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