Bennet Raglin/Getty
Suzanne Malveaux, CNN’s longtime White House correspondent, national reporter and broadcaster, is leaving the network after 20 years.
CNN CEO Chris Licht announced the news during a meeting Friday morning, according to CNN The Washington Post.
In a memo obtained by multiple outlets, including TBEN, the 56-year-old Malveaux shared that she would be leaving her job to focus on her family and pursue “new opportunities,” including a partnership with Nelson Mandela’s great-grandson.
The veteran journalist’s longtime partner is Karine Jean-Pierre, the current White House press secretary, and they share an 8-year-old daughter.
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Malveaux, who was a correspondent for NBC News in Chicago and Washington, D.C. before joining CNN, said she will be “forever grateful for the opportunities CNN gave me.”
“I was deeply honored to showcase the stories of human resilience from post-Katrina New Orleans to Cairo, Kabul, Washington and Lviv,” she wrote in the memo. “I hope my work has helped our audiences better understand the world as it changes around us.”
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The Harvard graduate, whose father was dean of the College of Medicine at Howard University, and whose mother was an educator who died of ALS in 2018, has covered a wide variety of news in her two decades with the cable network.
Malveaux covered five presidents, including Barack Obama’s campaign, and was one of the first black women at CNN to solo anchor a weekday show.
Larry Busaca/Getty Suzanne Malveaux
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“CNN’s platform enabled me to raise global awareness for those brave people battling ALS, including my mother Myrna Malveaux who fought to keep us as one family during her illness,” she wrote. “While I thrived on the energy of covering breaking news and politics, the rhythm of my life has shifted to the more personal.”
She added: “I love being a mother, and the time I have with my eight-year-old daughter is priceless. I am so grateful that my mother and daughter had the opportunity to have a beautiful relationship in to build before she died.”
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Malveaux said she approached the network last fall asking to step away from her full-time role, and that “they supported me.”
The reporter joins a number of personalities who have left the network in recent months, including Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr and anchor reporter Martin Savidge.
Hundreds of staff were laid off last month, but Malveaux’s departure is not related to the unrest, according to TBEN.
Earlier this week, newly retired Republican Adam Kinzinger joined CNN’s political team as a senior commentator.
