Lisa Ling to Speak at AAJA Awards Luncheon

Lisa Ling, special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show and the National Geographic Channel, will be this year’s speaker at the National Journalism Awards Luncheon during AAJA’s 18th Annual National Convention, June 21-24, 2006 at the Sheraton Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii.

For the Oprah Winfrey Show, Ling has been sent to cover the Lord’s Resistance Army and the crisis of AIDS orphans in Uganda, bride burning in India and gang-rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ling was the first woman host of National Geographic’s flagship Explorer series which premiered two decades ago. For the program, she investigated the increasingly deadly drug war in Colombia, examined the complex issues surrounding China's one-child policy and explored the phenomenon of female suicide bombers in Chechnya and Israel's occupied territories. She also explored the hidden and dangerous culture inside American prisons as well as an organization dubbed by law enforcement as “the world’s most dangerous gang."

Prior to traveling the globe for Explorer, Ling was known for revealing her "view" of the world to millions of Americans as co-host of Barbara Walters' hit daytime talk show, The View.

Ling has been working in television since the age of16. The Northern California native hosted Scratch, a nationally syndicated teen magazine show and then moved on to become one of the youngest reporters for Channel One News, a network seen in middle and high schools across the country—all while attending the University of Southern California.

By the age of 25, Ling was Channel One's senior international correspondent, visiting violent hotspots around the globe. In the field, she hunted down cocaine processing labs, reported on refugee crises’ and shared tea with the Dalai Lama. All told, Ling reported from more than two dozen countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Algeria, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Japan, India and Iran.

Her position as a role model for today's youth is one she embraces. In 2001, she hosted the television special "Teen People's 20 Teens Who Will Change The World," and her incredible footage shot following the Taliban's takeover in Afghanistan helped provide insight for "The Day it All Changed," a teen forum she lead for the WB Network.

Ling has also hosted the Golden Globes pre-show for NBC for three years. Ling's hard-work continues off-camera: she serves as a contributing editor for USA Weekend, and has produced eight documentaries for PBS, several of which won awards. She also co-authored a National Geographic book entitled, “Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: rituals of womanhood." In April, 2001, she fulfilled her late Uncle John's dream by running and completing the Boston Marathon with a time of 4:34 and raising money and awareness for pediatric cancer and the "Ali & Dad's Army" foundation.