She was born Elizabeth Sondra Schwartz, the daughter of Sheila Fay (née Gopen) and Charles A.
[1] She has two sisters and a brother: Pamela Fay Cohen, Julia Molly Healy, and David Ansin Schwartz[1] and was raised in Needham, Massachusetts.
[7] Cohen worked at WLVI in Boston as associate producer of environmental program Green Watch.
She also worked as a reporter for States News Service in Washington, DC and for The Times Union in Albany, New York.
She focuses on health-related issues and has reported from a medical angle on major news stories including the Gulf oil spill, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.