Janelle Rodriguez

Executive Vice President, NBC News

Rodriguez was a keynote speaker at ISOJ 2023. Watch her presentation here.

Janelle Rodriguez@janelleNBC
Janelle Rodriguez is NBC News’ Executive Vice President, overseeing NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, the network’s 24/7 streaming news network NBC News NOW and breaking news special coverage. Rodriguez was recently elevated to the network’s leadership ranks in January 2023. She joined NBC News in January 2015.

Under Rodriguez’s leadership, NBC News NOW has become the fastest growing streaming news network in the U.S. NBC News NOW is free, 24/7 and has more live hours than any other streaming news network. In 2022, NBC News NOW hit record viewership with a third consecutive year of growth. Already widely distributed across more than a dozen platforms, NBC News NOW expanded with national and international linear distribution in 2022.

Before joining NBC News, Rodriguez served as Vice President of Programming for CNN, where she led all dayside and weekend programming for the network. At CNN, she was credited with directing award-winning coverage of many breaking news events and with driving greater collaboration. Variety honored Rodriguez as a Daytime TV Impact Honoree in 2013.

In 2022, Rodriguez was featured on the CableFax Pride List and the Fast Company Queer 50 list. Rodriguez has won three Emmy Awards for Election Night coverage as well as for Hosni Mubarak stepping down as President of Egypt in 2011. She also earned Peabody Awards for reporting of the Gulf Oil Spill, the 2008 presidential primary campaigns, and for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and was part of the CNN team that won an Alfred I. DuPont Award for coverage of the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2005. Rodriguez led all of CNN’s cross-platform coverage of the 2011 Royal Wedding, resulting in a Shorty Award for Best Use of Video in a Social Media Campaign. Rodriguez holds a Bachelor’s degree in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production from San Francisco State University.