Mara Liasson
National Political Correspondent, NPR
Mara Liasson is the national political correspondent for NPR. Her reports can be heard regularly on NPR’s award-winning newsmagazine All Things Considered and Morning Edition, where she provides extensive coverage of politics and policy from Washington, DC – focusing on the White House and Congress – and also reports on political trends beyond the Beltway.
Each election year, Liasson provides key coverage of the candidates and issues in both presidential and congressional races. During her tenure, she has covered six presidential elections – from 1992 to 2012. Prior to her current assignment, Liasson was NPR’s White House correspondent for all eight years of the Clinton administration. She has won the White House Correspondent Association’s Merriman Smith Award for daily news coverage in 1994, 1995, and again in 1997. From 1989 to 1992, Liasson was NPR’s congressional correspondent.
Liasson joined NPR in 1985 as a general assignment reporter and newscaster. From September 1988 to June 1989, she took a leave of absence from NPR to attend Columbia University in New York as a recipient of a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in economics and business journalism.
Prior to joining NPR, Liasson was a freelance radio and television reporter in San Francisco. She was also managing editor and anchor of California Edition, a California public radio nightly news program, as well as a print journalist for The Vineyard Gazette in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Liasson is a graduate of Brown University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in American history.
Having covered every major election and landmark political event for the past 20 years, Mara Liasson expertly discusses Washington’s changing political climate in riveting keynotes.
The Changing Face of American Politics and Elections
Liasson delivers a candid perspective on how the media impacts elections and voters' opinions, whether journalists are accurately bringing a voice to the American people and what we can all expect from the increasingly media- and tech-savvy caigns of our future.