A Filipino American broadcast journalist will be moderating the 2016 vice presidential debate, according to the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
Elaine Quijano, a CBSN anchor and CBS News correspondent, will be the first Asian American reporter to moderate a general election campaign during a national debate, and the first anchor of a digital network to do so, according to The Washington Post.
The 90-minute debate, which will be the only one to take place between Democratic Senator Tim Kaine and Republican Governor Mike Pence, will be held Oct. 4, at Longwood University in Virginia at 6 p.m. on CBS.
Quijano, who has previously covered major events such as the 9/11 attacks, the US invasion of Iraq, the Beltway sniper attacks, the 2008 financial crisis and the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster for CNN News, currently leads political coverage for CBSN, a 24-hour digital streaming network where she anchors broadcasts of the 2016 presidential election.
Quijano graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1995. She began her career as an intern with the CBS-affiliated WCIA-TV based in Champaign, Illinois. She went on to work for a local station in Tampa, Florida, associated with ABC as a general assignment reporter, before finally landing a position with CNN in 2000, where she served as a Washington D.C-based correspondent who covered high-profile beats such as the Pentagon, the Supreme Court and the White House.
Quijano made her move to CBS in 2010, basing herself in New York. She went on to cover key events such as the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, Hurricane Sandy and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. She also was a part of the team that received an Alfred duPont Award for their coverage of the 2012 Newtown elementary school tragedy.
