Everything You Need to Know about CNN's New Anchor Pamela Brown

She has a new role at CNN. She has two kids under 5. She attends law school at GW. And Pamela brown is only warming up.

Pamela Brown has gotten used to life’s chaos, or, in her soft Kentucky phrasing, its messiness. “Last night, my kids were watching a cartoon, and I’m reading an online law book trying to absorb it all,” says the CNN veteran anchor and reporter whose new role is chief investigative correspondent for the network. Brown scrolled through the dense book because she’s also a month away from earning a master’s of studies in law degree from George Washington University.

On the evening I interviewed her, Brown had already patiently and enthusiastically endured a Modern Luxury photo shoot and was two hours away from filling in for Anderson Cooper. The following evening she hosted a CNN Town Hall. In her new investigative role, she regularly crisscrosses the country unearthing crimes, injustices and the fallout from news-adjacent events. I wondered out loud how she sleeps or even squares each moment in 24 hours.

“To be honest, it’s not like I’m floating through the day perfectly. I mean, it can be really messy sometimes, and you just do what you can do to survive and get through it all. I have a loving and supportive husband. I have amazing colleagues. And I still try to get in my sleep, although I’ll admit to taking catnaps,” says Brown.

That Brown finds herself at this inflection point in her life doesn’t seem to surprise her. “I’m a big believer that the journey of learning never ends; every day is kind of an eye-opening experience for me. I’m always thinking there are so many areas where I can get better.” There’s not an ounce of humble-bragging in Brown’s delivery; she has a type of self-assessing sincerity, coupled with unflappable kindness, that seems to be as rare as a misplaced hair in the upper echelon of Washington media circles. I figure Brown is someone who would give directions to DC tourists and walk half a block with them to ensure they’re headed the right way.

The journalist’s own latest journey started in January, when CNN’s brass offered her the chief investigative correspondent gig. “I have the sacred duty of taking over for Drew Griffin, who sadly passed away last year,” she says. “I was honored that they even chose me to take over for Drew because he was just such an amazing journalist who, in my opinion, did some of the best stories and documentaries I’ve ever seen.”

While Brown still has anchoring duties, she says her new role allows her to take deep dives into subjects; she also benefits from a massive team of reporters and producers all working in tandem. “Journalistically, I’ve learned a lot more about how to use technology to analyze data when pulling pieces together and connecting the dots in a way that I wasn’t doing as much when I covered the White House and built relationships for gathering information,” says Brown, whose recent investigative work has uncovered everything from a sexual assault on a commercial ship to what truly happens in the aftermath of chemical spills from train derailments. (A day after Brown’s story aired about the sexual assault, the Coast Guard took action to discipline the accuser.)

While eyeballs on cable news reflect the ebb and flow of current events (election cycles, natural disasters, scandal), Brown says her world of storytelling has actually expanded with the platforms for conveying those stories.

“More people are streaming like never before,” she says. “But guess what? CNN is the No. 1 news site online. And our investigative stories are at the top of the homepage. Appointment television might be gone, but the audience’s hunger for great, investigative stories never goes away on both traditional TV and digital platforms. It’s about the power of what we do. When I interview a woman who says she’s been sexually assaulted on a commercial ship, and you see the pain in her eyes, viewers are seeing and feeling all of it—people just love a good story, no matter what package it comes in.”

So, again, as Brown balances working with her new CNN team and motherhood, many hours the past two years have been spent, backpack in tow, in Foggy Bottom at GW’s law school with JD students 10 to 15 years her junior. Intimidating? “Yeah, a little at first,” she admits. “But I’ve always had this pull to attend law school. And, with just about anything in life, you sometimes hear a little voice in your head, and, if you don’t listen to it, it comes back to haunt you.”

Brown says the degree serves as another career building block. For example, when the war in Ukraine started, she was taking a national security law class. “I peppered the professor with so many questions that it took all of the air out of the classroom,” laughs Brown, who says CNN’s leadership has been incredibly supportive of this academic endeavor, allowing her to take time off when she had a makeup exam. “The network sees the benefit of my professional development, because it’s making me a better journalist.”

Amid all of the self-improvement these days, Brown credits her parents for her foundational success. Her mother, Phyllis George, who passed away three years ago, was a journalism pioneer as the first woman to hold an on-air position in national sports broadcasting for CBS. “She was brilliant, and she was my role model,” says Brown. “She watched me daily and gave me the good, the bad and the ugly. She’s always with me now, when I’m prepping for a story and just making sure that I’m buttoned up and ready to go."

Brown’s father, John, died in November. “He was completely invested in my career, and he’s always someone I could lean on,” says Brown about her father, who was the governor of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983. “He told me, over and over, that preparation is the key to success— be completely prepared when opportunities come. Even right now as I talk to you, I’m probably overpreparing for the live interviews I’ll do as I host Anderson Cooper’s show tonight. But I’m ready.”

A day after our photo shoot, I received a text from Brown. It was a picture of her father in the hospital last fall; IVs snaked around his arms, and tubes ran down his throat. “He had been through weeks of hell, and he could no longer speak,” says Brown, recalling her father’s last days, surrounded by his children and other family members. “He had a whiteboard and pen to communicate.”

The picture of her father also showed the whiteboard at the foot of his bed. Brown’s father had scribbled on the board: “I’ve never been so happy.”

“This should be a life inspo meme!” Brown texted me. I texted back that I thought it was beautiful. And, yes, inspirational. It’s clearly a message—and life sentiment—she employs every day, messiness and all.