Natalie Morales-Rhodes is an American journalist working for National Broadcasting Company News.
Background
Morales was born in Taiwan, to a Brazilian mother, Penelope, and a Puerto Rican father, Lieutenant Colonel Mario Morales, Junior. She speaks Spanish and Portuguese and spent the first eighteen years of her life living overseas in Panama, Brazil, and Spain as a "United States. Air Force brat".
Education
She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Summa Cum Laude.
Career
She is the Today Show news anchor and third hour co-anchor and appears on other programs including Dateline National Broadcasting Company and National Broadcasting Company Nightly News. Morales holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rutgers University with dual majors in journalism and Latin American studies. Following college, Morales worked at Chase Bank in New York before pursuing her journalism career.
Morales served as a weekend anchor/reporter and morning co-anchor at WVIT-television in Hartford, Connecticut, where she reported on the Columbine shootings, Hurricane Floyd, the 2000 Presidential election and the September 11, 2001 attacks.
She also co-hosted and reported for the Emmy-nominated documentary, Save Our Sound, a joint production with W National Broadcasting Company on preserving the Long Island Sound. She began her on-air career at News 12 – The Bronx as the first morning anchor.
She also served as camera operator, editor and producer for that network. In 1999, she was voted one of the 50 Most Influential Latinas for her news coverage and reports by the Hispanic daily newspaper El Diario Louisiana Prensa.
Previously, Morales spent two years working behind the scenes at Court television Morales was an anchor and correspondent for Microsoft and National Broadcasting Company from 2002 to 2006.
She covered a number of major news stories there including the 2004 Presidential election, the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, the Iraqi prisoner abuse, Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, the Northeast Blackout of 2003, the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks and the investigation and trial of Scott Peterson. Additionally, she was named one of Hispanic Magazine’s Top Trendsetters of 2003. Morales joined the Today show in 2006 as a national correspondent, and was named co-anchor of the third hour of the show in March 2008.
On May 9, 2011, it was announced that Morales would replace Ann Curry as the news anchor for Today, when Curry succeeded Meredith Vieira as host of Today in June 2011.
People en Español named her one of its Fifty Most Beautiful People for 2007. She came in at #1. Aside from her journalistic duties, Morales was the co-anchor of National Broadcasting Company"s coverage of the Macy"s July 4 fireworks spectacular.
Morales hosted Mission Universe 2011 at Credicard Hall in São Paulo Paulo, Brazil and hosted Mission Universe 2014 in Doral, Florida. Morales appeared in Blue Sky"s Rio 2 as a newscaster on April 2014.
She appeared as herself in the 2015 television film, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell Number!.