Juju Chang Biography

Hyunju "Juju" Chang (born September 17, 1965) is a Korean-American Emmy Award-winning television journalist for ABC News, and currently serves as a special correspondent and fill-in anchor for Nightline. Previously she was the news anchor for ABC News' morning news program Good Morning America from 2009"2011.

Early life and education

Juju Chang was born in Seoul, South Korea, to Okyong and Palki Chang and was raised in Sunnyvale, California, following her family's emigration to the U.S. in 1969. She was a part of Adrian C. Wilcox High School's graduating class of 1983. At a young age, Chang was a nationally ranked swimmer.

She graduated with honors from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in political science and communications. At Stanford she was awarded the Edwin Cotrell Political Science Prize.

Career

Early career

Chang began work for ABC in 1984 as a desk assistant. In 1991 she became a producer and off-air reporter for World News Tonight, producing live events coverage and stories for its "American Agenda" segment. Her off-air reporting assignments included the 1991 Gulf War (during which she was based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia) and the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

For World News Tonight, she produced a series on women's health, which won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in 1995. She left World News Tonight in 1995 to become a reporter for KGO-TV, an ABC affiliate, in San Francisco, covering state and local news topics.

Return to ABC News

After a year at KGO-TV, Chang returned to ABC News in 1996, taking up the role of correspondent for the ABC affiliate news service NewsOne in Washington D.C. At NewsOne she covered the White House, Capitol Hill and the 1996 presidential election.

Returning to World News Tonight in 1998, she covered such stories as Hurricane Georges, the anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Her first news anchor roles came in 1999, when she hosted the early-morning newscasts of ABC News' World News Now, an overnight news program, and World News This Morning where she reported on national and international news.

20/20 and Nightline

Chang has contributed reports to ABC's news magazine 20/20, including a piece on Tanzania's black market for albino body parts in 2009.

She has continued contributing reports to 20/20 since moving to GMA. On ABC's Nightline, Chang has reported on a broad range of topics including the Heparin tainting case and the in vitro fertilization industry and has acted as host on the show's feature, "Face-Off".

Good Morning America

Juju Chang became the first Korean-American in a prominent role on a U.S. morning news television show when she joined Good Morning America on December 14, 2009. She contributes news stories and segments for the show, in addition to her role as news anchor.

As the news anchor on Good Morning America, Chang reported on the earthquake in Haiti in January 2010. She traveled to Haiti to cover the aftermath of the natural disaster, interviewing locals and finding relatives of a Haitian friend. She later took part in the Housatonic Valley Sprint Triathlon on September 11, 2010, to raise money for UNICEF's relief efforts in Haiti in collaboration with Good Morning America.

For a series of reports airing on Good Morning America from June 25, 2010, Chang traveled to Seoul, South Korea. During her visit to South Korea, she interviewed South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on the relationship between North and South Korea following the sinking of a South Korean warship.

Nightline

On March 29, 2011, it was announced that Chang would be leaving Good Morning America to take a full-time role on Nightline, ABC News President Ben Sherwood announced Tuesday. Chang will be a special correspondent and fill-in anchor. She had spent the past 15 months as the news reader for GMA as well as contributor to 20/20 and World News, programs she will continue to work with.

Other work

In addition to her roles at ABC, Chang has also hosted a series for PBS. In 1999 she was the host of a seven-part television series called The Art of Women's Health. She hosts an interactive digital show for ABC News NOW called Moms Get Real, which aims to show the realities of modern motherhood, she also made a cameo appearance in episode 19 of the second season of ABC's hit primetime drama, Revenge.

Awards

For her work in television journalism, Chang has received a number of awards. Her earliest award was an Alfred I. duPont Award in 1995 for a series on women's health produced with Peter Jennings. In addition to the duPont Award, Chang has won two Gracie Awards, one for a report on judicial activism for NOW, a newsmagazine on PBS, and one for Women and Science, a profile of Ben Barres, a transgendered neurobiologist, for 20/20. She has won three Emmy awards for her work with ABC, including one for her role as a correspondent on ABC's live coverage of California wildfires in 2008. She has also received a Freddie award (for health and medical media) for The Art of Women's Health, a series she hosted for PBS.

Personal life

Chang married Neal Shapiro on December 2, 1995. At that time, she converted to Judaism. Chang and Shapiro have three sons. She is active in the Asian-American community as a founding board member of the Korean American Community Foundation and an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations.