Elaine Quijano Speaker & Booking Information

Elaine Quijano was born in 1975 in the United States of America. Her mother migrated to the US from the Philippines. Her father is from Davao City, where a maximum of her family still lives. She grew up in the Skokie and Morton Grove suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1995 from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Initially, Quijano wanted to become an enginneer, Quijano said on the Filipinas Magazine Show, “I kind of lucked into the whole broadcast journalism field, because I originally started off in college as an engineering major.” She further added, “It became very clear to me very early on that was not what I was going to do for a living. So, on a whim, I decided to take this intro to broadcast journalism course, which I loved.”

Quijano started her career as an intern at WCIA-TV in Champaign, Illinois, in 1994, and later became a reporter/producer/anchor there. She left the WCIA -TV and become a general assignment reporter for WFTS-TV in Tampa, Florida in 1998, Quijano.

After two years later, she joined CNN Newsource, an affiliate of CNN as a correspondent in December 2000. During her time at CNN, she has reported September 11, 2001, attacks. She went to Kuwait City shortly before the U.S. aggression of Iraq in 2003. She resided in Kuwait for about a month. Quijano also reported the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and the Beltway sniper attacks.

In 2004, Quijano joined CNN/US as a Washington, D.C.-based general assignment correspondent. She covered the Supreme Court, the campaign of vice presidential candidate John Edwards, the Pentagon, and the 2004 re-election campaign of President George W. Bush.

She named a White House correspondent for CNN in 2006 where, Quijano covered major stories of the George W. Bush administration, including the War on Terror, the unsuccessful bid for comprehensive immigration reform, and the 2008 financial crisis. On December 23, 2003, she left CNN.

Quijano joined CBS News in 2010 as a general assignment reporter. She has covered the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 and the 2014 World Cup.

Quijano is an anchor for CBSN, the digital streaming network for CBS. Quijano is also anchoring the Sunday edition of CBS Weekend News where she has appeared on CBS “This Morning” and “The CBS Evening News”.

In 2016, Quijano was named by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) as the moderator for the vice presidential debate on October 4, at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. Quijano, therefore, became the first Asian American to moderate a U.S. discussion for national elected office in the general election and the youngest journalist to lead a debate since 1988. It is also the first time a digital network anchor has been selected to moderate a national debate. Since Judy Woodruff, Quijano, 42, is the youngest journalist to moderate a debate on the national stage.