Outstanding Recent Alumni Award
BECKY BRITTAIN’S BIO
Becky Brittain is one of CNN’s White House Producers, where she covers the daily movements and events of White House and the entire administration. She was named to the position in August 2005. She is based at the White House as well as in CNN’s Washington, DC bureau.
As a White House producer, she is responsible for coordinating the network’s coverage of President Bush by reporting behind the scenes, giving CNN editorial guidance, and coordinating liveshots for CNN’s White House correspondents. She also represents all five major television networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC) in the travel pool rotation by participating in briefings by senior White House officials and reporting on all Presidential movements to the rest of the networks. Through this rotation, she has been in numerous motorcades and flown on Air Force One many times.
Also in her capacity as White House producer, Brittain has covered the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts, various bill signings, and a variety of historic speeches on topics such as the budget or the war on terror. In addition, she has covered the official and state visits of world leaders such as Queen Elizabeth II of England and Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan. She has attended press conferences of the President with more than twenty world leaders. She has traveled extensively with the White House Press Corps throughout the country and internationally. She has been to more than 40 states and 20 countries with the President. In January 2008, she traveled with the President on a historic eight country trip that included meetings with Prime Minister Olmert of Israel, Palestinian President Abbas, and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. She was also during Bush’s historic talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki during a meeting in Jordan in November 2006.
Brittain has been at the network since 1998. During her career at CNN, she has covered every major news story including the Monica Lewinsky scandal, September 11th, the 2000 and 2004 Presidential campaigns, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the tsunamis in 2005. She also has covered domestic stories such as the anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill in 2001, the sniper attacks in the Washington DC area in 2002, the state funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In April 2007, she covered the Virginia Tech shootings at her alma mater. She has been awarded an Emmy in 2001 for her part in the coverage of 9/11 and the Peabody Award in 2005 for the coverage of Hurricane Katrina.
She was an associate producer for the show “Inside Politics” from 1999 until 2004 and worked on various other shows prior to that such as “Crossfire” and “Larry King Live”. She began her career at CNN with an internship with CNN’s program “Crossfire”.
In her spare time, Brittain is active in her church at First Baptist Church of Alexandria where she serves in various capacities in leadership. She also served as a mentor and tutor through the program Community Club to a DC public school student throughout his high school career from 2001-2007. She also secured a grant to partially fund a trip of some of the program’s students to South Africa. She also serves on the Communication Alumni Advisory Board of Virginia Tech.
Becky graduated with honors from Virginia Tech as a double major in Communication and Political Science.