Lilia Luciano
National Correspondent and Anchor
CBS News
Lilia Luciano is an award-winning journalist, documentary film director, producer, podcaster, and speaker. She is currently a national correspondent and anchor at CBS News based in New York. Luciano’s reporting has taken her around the world, from covering the Israel-Hamas war for CBS News to embedding with smugglers who traffic gasoline from Venezuela to Colombia for VICE, to traveling along conflict zones across Colombia for the HBO documentary she directed, Wars of Others, and cartel-controlled areas in Mexico for Discovery Channel. She has spent over a decade covering immigration and drug policy at the U.S.-Mexico Border for various networks and platforms, as well as historic climate catastrophes from the frontlines.
Luciano led the breaking news coverage from Israel on the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal and the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners for CBS News. Throughout 2022, Luciano led the coverage across CBS News broadcasts and platforms of the Robb Elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas; which earned her and her team an Emmy nomination in 2023. She also produced and hosted the CBS Reports documentary, Guns in the Classroom—which focused on the Uvalde shooting and the dilemma of protecting children amid the mass proliferation of guns in the United States.
Luciano was the lead anchor on the CBS News streaming network’s America Decides coverage of Election Night 2022 and has reported major international stories, like the assassination of Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in Quito, Ecuador. In the Summer of 2023, she covered the devastation of historic wildfires in Lahaina, Maui, the death of a child in Border Patrol custody; the trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried, as well as the ongoing trial in the murder of four University of Idaho students in Moscow. Other stories include devastating tornados in Kentucky, the Astroworld mass casualty event in Houston, the capital case of Melissa Lucio, the COVID-19 pandemic, the battle over abortion rights, teen suicide, the opioid crisis, trans rights, the historic Black Lives Matter protests, and multiple climate catastrophes across the U.S.
Luciano wrote, produced, and hosted the CBS News Reports documentaries, “Fighting for Paradise: The Future of Puerto Rico,” and “Guns in the Classroom.”
She anchors the CBS News live stream and her feature stories for CBS Sunday Morning, CBS Mornings, and CBS Evening News include profiles on Angela Davis, Jimmy Chin, Rita Moreno, Maluma, Karol G, among many others. She is also the host and executive producer of iHeart Radio’s El Flow podcast, which has won multiple awards, including a Signal Award in 2023.
Luciano’s stories appear on CBS News platforms, including CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell, CBS Mornings, Sunday Morning, the CBS News Streaming network, which she often anchors, and CBS News Radio. She anchors the CBS News streaming network various days every week from the CBS Broadcasting Center in New York City and often anchors the CBS Weekend News.
She has a unique style of reporting that was developed over more than a decade of video storytelling.
In 2019, Luciano won a Walter Cronkite Award for excellence in journalism, as well as a regional Emmy Award for Puerto Rico Rises, which she directed and produced for ABC 10 in Sacramento. Her work on the U.S.-Mexico border earned her an Emmy Award in 2019 and her coverage of the Northern California Wildfires has received regional Emmys two years in a row as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award.
She is the director and producer of Wars of Others, an HBO Latino film about the social, environmental, health, and security consequences of the war on drugs in Colombia. She also worked as a host on several VICE platforms, including VICE News, VICELAND, and Munchies. She is the founder of CoInspire, a video and event platform that explores the values of entrepreneurship. In 2018 she was the chief investigative correspondent for Discovery Channel’s Border Live telling immersive stories about the people who live, work and survive along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Luciano sits on the Emeritus Advisory Board of the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up campaign to promote access to quality education and the well-being of girls worldwide. She has been a speaker and moderator at multiple tech conferences around the world, including for Emmerson Collective, The Inter-American Dialogue, The Oslo Freedom Forum, The Girl Up Leadership Summit, The Visionaries Summit, TEDx, Nexus Global, SIME, Dent, and more.
As a national NBC News correspondent, reporting in both English and Spanish, Luciano led coverage of a number of high-profile news stories and reported for NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, MSNBC, The Weather Channel, CNBC, and Telemundo.
She started her career at Univision Networks as an entertainment anchor and correspondent, hosting and producing content for various network platforms, including the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Luciano is fluent in Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
She graduated from the University of Miami with degrees in Economics and Broadcast Journalism. She previously attended Tufts University 2003, when she made her transition from pre-med studies to journalism.
