Stephanie Elam Biography
Stephanie Elam is a CNN correspondent covering climate change in the Los Angeles bureau. She has previously served as a CNN business correspondent as well as a weekend evening anchor and general assignment reporter for KNBC Los Angeles.
She began her journalism career as an intern with Dow Jones Newswires in New York City and at the end of the summer they offered her a full-time job as a financial news copy editor. She got promoted every year she was there to the point she knew she wasn’t going to get promoted again, as the people in the next tier had been there for a long time so she interviewed with Bridge News and got the job. She also appeared on PBS’s Nightly Business Report and live-streaming financial website WebFN.com. She was eventually hired full time by WebFN.
After the company was shut down in June 2003, she began freelancing for CNNfn, the network’s financial news channel. In April 2007, she signed with CNN as a business correspondent. In 2011 she moved to Los Angeles and since CNN didn’t have an open position for her she was offered a job as an anchor and reporter for NBC Los Angeles which she began in August 2011. In May 2013 she returned to CNN as a correspondent for the western region based out of our Los Angeles bureau.
Stephanie Elam Age
Stephanie was born in 1974 in California, USA. She celebrates her birthday on January 23.
Stephanie Elam Height
She stands at a height of 5 feet 6 inches tall.
Stephanie Elam Ethnicity
Stephanie is an American nation of African-American ethnicity. She belongs to Bissau-Guinean ancestry/race.
Stephanie Elam Education
Stephanie graduated from Howard University in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in broadcast journalism. Where she was a swimmer and a sorority member of Alpha Kappa Alpha.
Stephanie Elam Parents
Elam has not revealed the names of her parents she however posted a photo of her father on her socials where she revealed that he was of Bissau-Guineans decent and had passed on in June 2018. She was brought up alongside her three older brothers.
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Stephanie Elam Husband
Stephanie got married to her husband Jeffrey ‘Jeff’ Rush in 2008 after meeting him in January 2007. Jeff is the first vice president and senior financial advisor at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.
Jeff has worked in wealth management industry since 1998. He began his career as an Investment Management Specialist. She joined Merrill in 2006 where he served as a Director until she left seven years later to join Morgan Stanley where he served as a Financial Advisor and ultimately, a Producing Branch Manager. He returned to Merrill in 2019. His FINRA registrations include the Series 7, 9, 10, and 66.
In addition, he has served as a member of Bank of America’s Black Executive Leadership Team in Los Angeles. He was honored with the Global Diversity & Inclusion Award, one of Bank of America’s most prestigious employee honors, in 2020. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University, where he was Captain of the Men’s Swim Team.
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Stephanie Elam Children
Stephanie Elam Daughter; She has a daughter known as Simone, who she refers as ‘Babycakes’, born on May 29, 2010. She once said in an interview that at one point in life she didn’t want to have children after she witnessed the 9/11 tragedy.
“On September 11, 2001, I was at the window on the 28th floor looking at the hole in one tower when another jet slammed into the other trade center tower, forcing big chunks of debris to fly toward our building. We ran for our lives. What I saw that day scarred me. I just couldn’t see the point of bringing a child into this world if it was so full of evil and sadness. I was single at the time and decided that I would be the cool aunt, but never a mother.”
She changed her mind after her husband convinced her that fear wasn’t a good enough reason to not have a child. She said she is grateful to her husband for changing her mind as she has become a better person and a better journalist since she became a parent.
Stephanie Elam CNN
Elam serves as a CNN correspondent based in the Los Angeles Bureau. She first joined CNN in 2003 as a financial reporter through 2011 based in New York City and also reported for CNN International and HLN. She reported for the program “Money Team Reporter”, “American Morning” and the weekly program “Your Bottom Line”. She also co-hosted “Black Enterprise Report” from 2005 through 2007.
She left CNN in 2011 and joined KNBC Los Angeles as a weekend evening anchor and general assignment reporter. During her tenure, she anchored the Seal Beach murders and Whitney Houston’s death. After two years she returned to CNN as a correspondent.
During her tenure, she has covered numerous natural disasters for CNN — from Hurricanes Matthew, Harvey and Irma in the Southeast; an EF5 tornado which killed 15 adults and nine children in Moore, Oklahoma; to several wildfires in the West, including the Thomas Fire which at the time, was the largest wildfire in California’s history. Elam has also reported on the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake threat in the Pacific Northwest, California’s drought and related issues like subsidence in the state’s central valley. She also covered Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano as its eruption devoured much of the Leilani Estates subdivision on the Big Island.
She covered the death of musician Prince, the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. She was also one of the first reporters on the scene after a shooting at Los International Airport stranded thousands of travelers and took the life of TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez, marking the first on-duty death since the security organization was created in 2001.
She began her career as a copy editor for Dow Jones Newswires before joining Bridge News where she helped coordinate seamless 24-hour news coverage among the organization’s newsrooms worldwide.
While at Bridge News, she covered corporate earnings for PBS’s “Nightly Business Report” and for WebFN. As the only full-time reporter in New York for WebFN, she anchored “Market on the Close,” a one-hour program that tracked the stock market in the last hour of trading. She also previously helmed “First Business,” a weekly syndicated business program and co-hosted “Black Enterprise Report,” a nationally syndicated show focused on business, career and financial education.
Stephanie Elam Salary
She earns an annual base salary of around $150,000. She has an estimated net worth of $2 million.