PERSON: Savannah Guthrie

Co-Anchor

Television anchor Savannah Clark Guthrie, named after her great-great-grandmother, was born on December 27, 1971, in Melbourne, Australia, where her father had been sent on business. When she was 2 years old, Guthrie and her family moved to Tucson, Arizona. She was one of three children, and learned to play tennis and the piano as a child. When she was 16, her father passed away, and her mother, a stay-at-home mom, returned to work. Guthrie later said that her mom was her biggest inspiration.

After high school, Guthrie attended the University of Arizona. She was initially unsure of what to study, and her mother suggested taking classes in journalism. While in school, Guthrie landed a job at a local public television station. When she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism in 1993, she took a job at a local TV station in Columbia, Missouri, where she worked for two years before she was offered a position with an NBC affiliate in her hometown of Tucson.

Five years later, Guthrie headed east to another NBC affiliate, WRC-TV, in Washington, D.C., where she covered the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and anthrax mailings. While working as a freelance reporter, she was also earning a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center. She graduated, magna cum laude, in 2002, and received the highest score on the Arizona bar exam.

From 2002 to 2003, Guthrie practiced law with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, and specialized in white-collar criminal defense. She returned to TV journalism in 2004, as a legal affairs correspondent for Court TV.

— biography.com