Tamala Edwards joined 6abc in January of 2005. She is the weekday co-anchor of Action News Mornings from 4:30am-7am, and is a regular co-host of Inside Story, conducting probing interviews with newsmakers like Governor Tom Corbett, Senator Pat Casey, Mayor Michael Nutter and others, as well as moderating many election debates. Prior to joining 6abc, Tamala Edwards was the anchor of ABC’s World News Now, and World News This Morning. Prior to joining World News Now, she was an ABC News correspondent based in the network’s Washington, D.C., bureau covering education, religion and culture for World News Tonight and other ABC News programs. She was an embedded reporter during the Iraq War, moving with the Air Force from Kuwait to Nasiriyah, Iraq. She joined ABC News as a White House correspondent in August 2001.
Before coming to ABC, Edwards was a staff writer at TIME Magazine. During the 2000 presidential election, she covered Vice President Al Gore’s campaign and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. She was a panelist in the Apollo Theatre debate in New York between Gore and Bradley, and Edwards also participated in MTV’s “Choose or Lose” broadcasts.
Ms. Edwards previously served as a correspondent in the Washington bureau of Time from 1995-1997, where she covered Bob Dole’s presidential campaign politics, society, and breaking news. Before coming to Washington in 1995, she worked for two years as a Time reporter in New York covering international news.
Ms. Edwards has written on a diverse number of topics including the cover story, “Who Needs a Husband?” on the changing dynamics surrounding love and marriage. She has also written about House and Senate races, the Reform Party, the fight over school funding in Vermont, and other highly charged political issues. She has covered the business boom of college preparation, the growing importance of women in philanthropy, the Supreme Court case of student-to-student sexual harassment and the public debate over books on topics like modesty, race and mental illness. She has written dispatches from the presidential campaign trail and articles on the passage of the historic balanced budget and tax-cut bill, the stripping of home rule from the District of Columbia, and an account of former Chinese first lady Madame Chang’s return to Washington.
While in New York at Time International from 1993-1995, she covered global issues from the reclamation of an ancient Jewish text in Bosnia to the international expansion of MTV News to an international art-world ruckus over a group of Canadian prehistoric figurines.
The Education Writers Association awarded Ms. Edwards first prize for her contribution to Time’s 1999 cover story, “What Makes a Good School.” In its August 2000 issue, Vogue magazine named her a journalist for “The Next Establishment,” and in November 2000, she was featured in Folio magazine’s “30 Under 30” list.
Born in Georgia and raised in Texas, Edwards graduated from Stanford University with an honors Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations. Tamala and her husband are the proud parents of two young sons.
Sneak Peek Into What You’ll Learn….
03:12 – Tam discusses the number one question people ask her about her job at a TV news anchor and the advice that has helped her through many challenges.
06:44 – Tam shares some of the clues you may receive when it’s time to take stock and do something else.
08:58 – Tam tells us the great advice she received about how to think about her job, in the context of being a mom.
11:46 – We learn the important advice Tam would give to anyone considering having a baby.
16:40 – Tam explains what the “third shift” is and what it looks like in her life.
18:40 – Tam shares the things people are most surprised to learn about her.
28:30 – Brass Tacks— The lightning round of concrete advice and tips.
Quotable quotes:
- “If you’re doing something and it’s really not going well and you’re really not happy, I think sometimes in life, the hardship is really meant to make you take stock.”
- “You have to make your peace with the idea that you occupy a space that nobody else can occupy.”
- “When you get in the game of whether or not you’re measuring up according to other people, it’s never going to work out.”
- “It’s the moment that you let go and stop trying to control things that things happen…it’s almost as if when you create space and breathe, something else moves into it.”
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