
[email protected]
Zinhle Essamuah is a reporter for NBC News on NBC News NOW. Previously, she was a correspondent at NowThis News, the number one most watched video news creator on social media, where she anchored KnowThis, a daily evening news show. During the show’s three-year run, Essamuah anchored from New York City, Washington D.C., the battleground state of Pennsylvania during the 2020 election, and hosted the daily Instagram series and election/debate night specials for the show. As the franchise expanded, Essamuah went on to host KnowThis Live, a weekly live interview show delivering the biggest breaking stories spanning the globe.
As a first generation American with roots in the African diaspora, Zinhle—pronounced zing-clay—has a deep understanding of cross-cultural communication. Essamuah covered breaking and long-form news stories around the country with a focus on politics, justice and culture. At NowThis, she led newsmaking and urgent interviews—including an exclusive one on one prime time interview with Vice President Kamala Harris on Discovery+ and OWN in 2021. Essamuah was also a lead writer on the daily newsletter, KnowThis, and a frequent contributor to the NowThis Brief podcast.
Prior to this role, you could find her chasing stories around the nation and the U.S. Capitol as the Political Correspondent on NowThis Morning, a live digital morning news show. She is an award-winning cinematographer and filmmaker whose freelance and corporate filmography has premiered on Starz/Hulu and at the St. Louis International Film Festival. She is a recipient of a Gracie Award for her original debut short documentary film documenting the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. She has been featured in Forbes, The School of the New York Times, Ghana Broadcast Corporation, Page Six, iHeartRadio, and Variety, and is a regular contributor to Cheddar News.
Essamuah has a special interest in teaching, and is a professor at The George Washington University in journalism and video production.Essamuah holds a Master’s degree in Media, Strategic Communication, and Documentary Filmmaking from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she co-founded the school’s first National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) chapter.
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