Stephanie Sy: The War-Zone Reporter Who Became One of PBS News Hour’s Most Trusted Correspondents
Stephanie Sy’s journalism career began the way few do: embedded with U.S. troops during the opening days of the Iraq War, filing dispatches that would launch her into national television news. More than two decades later, she’s become one of PBS News Hour’s most versatile correspondents, covering everything from Supreme Court rulings to earthquakes to the day-to-day churn of national politics — built on a résumé that spans nearly every major American news outlet.
Early Life and Education
Sy was born on January 16, 1977, and raised in Southern California. Her mother, Li Sy, immigrated to the United States from Taiwan in the 1960s and had originally studied journalism at the University of Missouri; her father, John J. Sy, worked as an engineer. That inherited pull toward journalism eventually took hold in Stephanie, who graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999 with a double major in international relations and environmental studies — an academic background in global affairs that would directly inform the foreign-correspondent track her career soon took.
Cutting Her Teeth in Local News
Like many television journalists, Sy started small. From 1999 to 2001, she worked as a reporter and fill-in anchor at WBTW in Florence, South Carolina. In September 2001, she moved to WTKR in Norfolk, Virginia, as a military reporter — a beat that would prove pivotal. In 2003, as the U.S. prepared to invade Iraq, Sy was embedded with troops covering the war for the former New York Times Broadcast Group, reporting that earned her an Associated Press award. That coverage caught the attention of ABC News, which hired her the same year.
Nearly a Decade at ABC News
Sy spent roughly eight years at ABC News, first reporting from London for ABC NewsOne before becoming a New York-based correspondent, and later returning several times to Baghdad as a reporter for ABC affiliates. Her most recognized work during this period came while based in Beijing as ABC’s Asia correspondent, where she covered the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake — reporting that focused heavily on the poorly constructed schools that led to the deaths of thousands of children. That coverage won her the Overseas Press Club’s David Kaplan Award for spot news and earned a national Emmy nomination. The same year, she won a Business Emmy for her contribution to an ABC World News report on the global food crisis.
Al Jazeera America and the Freelance Years
After a year as senior editor and correspondent at Everyday Health, Sy joined the newly launched Al Jazeera America in 2013, where she anchored the network’s two-hour live weekday morning program. She became known for anchoring coverage of major breaking news events, including the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling, and won a 2014 Gracie Award for her interview with Gloria Steinem on the network’s Talk to Al Jazeera series.
When Al Jazeera America shut down in 2016, Sy transitioned into freelance work, reporting for Yahoo News — where she anchored coverage of the 2018 midterm elections and reported live from Donald Trump’s 2016 election night victory party — alongside freelance anchoring stints for CNN, CNN International, and CBSN, CBS News’s streaming service. During this stretch, from 2015 to 2018, she also hosted Ethics Matter, an interview program produced by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and began contributing to PBS News Hour Weekend.
Joining PBS News Hour
In July 2019, PBS News Hour named Sy a correspondent and the inaugural anchor of PBS News Hour West, a new regional bureau based at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix. The bureau, which launched that October, was created to give West Coast audiences an updated news summary reflecting developments after the program’s original East Coast broadcast — part of a broader push by News Hour to expand its digital and regional reach.
Sy anchored PBS News Hour West for six years until the bureau ceased operations in December 2025 amid funding cuts across public broadcasting. She has continued as a PBS News Hour correspondent and substitute weekend anchor, reporting on a wide range of national and international stories — from aviation safety and TSA staffing shortages to U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations and cartel violence in Mexico. In 2026, Sy was part of the PBS News team awarded a Peabody Award for its series on immigration enforcement.
Recognition and Advocacy
Beyond her on-air work, Sy has served on the advisory board of Report for America, a nonprofit that places journalists in local newsrooms across the country. In 2015, the Asian American Journalists Association recognized her with its Mentor of the Year Award, reflecting a career that has included active support for younger journalists entering the field.
Personal Life
Sy has two daughters. She was previously married to journalist David Ariosto, a supervising producer for NPR’s All Things Considered; the couple married in 2017 and later divorced.
A Career Defined by Range
What sets Sy apart after more than two decades in the field is the sheer range of her reporting — war coverage, natural disasters, election nights, ethics and public affairs programming, and now the daily grind of national news at PBS. Few correspondents can claim bylines across ABC, Al Jazeera, CNN, Yahoo News, CBS, and PBS, and even fewer have done it while maintaining the kind of on-the-ground reporting instincts she first developed embedded with troops in Iraq more than twenty years ago.
