Dawna Friesen

Dawna Friesen (born October 8, 1964) is a Canadian television journalist, currently the chief anchor and executive editor of Global National. She was previously a foreign correspondent for NBC News.

Career
She started reading news at a hybrid television and radio station in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1985 and from there went on to report for other stations in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.

By the late 1990s she was recruited by national networks in Canada and the US and joined NBC News. While at NBC, Friesen covered stories out of London as well as the Middle East, including the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the kidnapping and murder of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi. She won a News & Documentary Emmy Award as a correspondent in NBC's coverage of the 2008 United States presidential election.

In 2010 Friesen joined Global News as their Global National anchor, succeeding Kevin Newman. Friesen was the third full-time female news anchor to lead a nightly newscast in Canada, after Sophie Thibault in 2002 and Céline Galipeau in 2009, and the first in English Canada. In 2011 she won the Gemini Award for best news anchor.

In addition to Global National, she also hosts the network's newsmagazine series The New Reality.

Personal life
Friesen was raised on a farm west of Winnipeg; her parents were nonobservant Mennonites. Her father had her work on the farm, and she learned how to drive a tractor when she was six. Her mother was active in local politics. She moved with her family to St. Albert, Alberta and graduated from Paul Kane High School in 1981. She then moved back to Manitoba to attend Red River College and worked as a waitress when she was young. Friesen graduated from RRC's Creative Communications program in 1984, and began her journalism career working in Brandon, Saskatoon, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. She re-married on July 28, 2018, to Rick Anderson after she divorced Tom Kennedy.

Both of her parents developed dementia, and in 2014 Friesen was featured in a 16×9 program about dementia and how families cope with it.

Awards

 * 2009 News & Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Coverage of a Breaking News Story – Long Form, as a correspondent in NBC's coverage of the 2008 United States presidential election.
 * 2011, Gemini Award, best news anchor