Shawna Thomas
Executive Producer, CBS News’ CBS Mornings
Thomas was a speaker on the panel “The media and election season: Are we gonna get it right this time?” at the 25th ISOJ. Watch the presentation here.
Award-winning journalist, producer and program executive Shawna Thomas is the executive producer for CBS News’ CBS MORNINGS. She joined CBS News from Quibi, where she served as a content development executive working on short-form news programming from CBS News, NBC News and BBC News for the mobile video platform. Her work has earned her recognition from her peers with four Emmy Awards, a Peabody, a Gracie Award and two Scripps Howard honors.
Before Quibi, Shawna spent three years at Vice News as the Washington, D.C. bureau chief, overseeing politics and policy coverage for HBO’s nightly newscast “Vice News Tonight.” Shawna was behind the program’s major political stories, including the Emmy-winning episode covering the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings, President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Putin in Helsinki and the 2018 midterm election. Shawna also was a senior producer on “Vice News Tonight’s” “Charlottesville” episode, which earned four Emmy Awards and the Peabody Award.
Previously, Shawna worked at NBC News for just over a decade. From 2014 to 2016, Shawna was a senior producer at NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” where she oversaw the broadcast’s digital profile and helped remake the show when Chuck Todd took over as moderator.
Between 2011 and 2014, she traveled the world covering former President Barack Obama for NBC News. Earlier, she was a Capitol Hill producer for the network. During her tenure at NBC News, Shawna was sent on assignments that included political convention coverage, ziplining in Alaska and detainee trials at Guantanamo Bay all while making time to try to get to a karaoke bar if time and scheduling allowed. She began her career at NBC as a news associate in 2006.
Shawna earned a BA in political communication from the George Washington University and a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Southern California.
