María de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien[1] (born September 19, 1966)[2] is an American broadcast journalist and executive producer.

[4] She is also a member of the Peabody Awards[5] board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

[1][25] O'Brien went back to school while pregnant with her first child and earned her degree from Harvard in English and American Literature in 2000.

[1][26] O'Brien started her career in journalism as a medical reporter on WXKS-FM in Boston because of her background as a pre-med student in college.

[27] O'Brien began her career as an associate producer and news writer at WBZ-TV, then the NBC affiliate in Boston.

"[17] Starting in 1996 and during the dot-com boom, O'Brien anchored MSNBC's weekend morning show and the cable network's technology program The Site, which aired weeknights from the spring of 1996 to November 1997.

The show was unique in that she interacted with a virtual character named Dev Null, played by Leo Laporte in a motion-capture suit.

[30] In 2005, she covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where she interviewed then head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Michael Brown.

[31] It was announced on February 21, 2013, that O'Brien had reached an agreement with CNN to leave Starting Point for the new Starfish Media Group production company.

[11][33] In 2023, O'Brien moderated a discussion with former Nickelodeon child stars that served as the concluding episode of Investigation Discovery's (another channel part of Warner Bros.

The program documented the successes, struggles, and complex issues faced by black men, women and families 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr.

In the first installment, O'Brien investigated how James Earl Ray, an armed robber and escaped convict, had already spent a year on the run a month before his path collided with that of Dr. King in Memphis, Tennessee.

[36] In fall of 2023, approaching the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, O'Brien collaborated with actor and film director Rob Reiner on a podcast series to cover the controversial topic, Who Killed JFK?.

[37] At the hearing, she accused Lou Dobbs and Tucker Carlson of disinformation, and also claimed MSNBC anchors Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O'Donnell were spreading "Russian conspiracy theories".

[citation needed] In June 2013, O'Brien formed the production and distribution company Starfish Media Group.

[38][39] Starfish Media Group signed a deal to produce a series of hour-long documentary specials for Al Jazeera America.

[citation needed] On January 12, 2016, O'Brien appeared on PBS's TV genealogy program, Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s Finding Your Roots.