CNN White House correspondent has Trinidad roots

Abby Phillip, the White House correspondent who has featured in CNN’s coverage of the suspenseful ballot count for the US presidential election over the past few days, has been gaining a large fan following for her calm, clear analysis of that developing story.
She has also become a social media sensation locally after her T&T connections were revealed. The popular anchor is the daughter of Trinidadians June and Carlos Phillip. Her father is a psychology programme manager for the District of Columbia Public Schools in Washington and her mother is a realtor and real estate investor with Fairfax Realty.
Her links to this country have been the focus of a widely shared Facebook post which states: “We are proud of our Caribbean girl, Trinidad and Tobago to be specific. She is holding her own on CNN on those political panel shows. A brilliant political analyst! Harvard trained. T&T is proud of you. Way to go, Abby Phillip.”
Phillip, 31, who grew up in Bowie, Maryland, has a degree in government but had initially intended on becoming a heart surgeon until her realisation that she loved talking to people led her into journalism.
In an interview with a US media outlet, she revealed: “My first journalism experience was going to Mississippi for a service trip where I had to write a blog throughout the entire thing, and I just really loved that experience. And I came back, and I knew that was what I had to do.”
She began her career as a White House reporter and blogger for Politico covering campaign finance issues and lobbying. She also appeared occasionally on Washington Week with Robert Costa on PBS.
Phillip worked at The Washington Post doing national political reporting and general assignments. She was also an ABC News Fellow and digital reporter in New York City. Following the fellowship, she joined the network’s Washington, DC bureau to work as a digital reporter covering politics. While there she produced stories for This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Nightline, and ABCNews.com.
On a recent CNN political panel she made the following observation: “Not only would Black women put Joe Biden in the White House, but they would also put a Black woman in the White House as well and that is the sort of historical poetry that I think we will live with for a long time.”
Phillip, who has been covering the Trump White House has featured prominently in much of the coverage of the US election campaign. She co-moderated the seventh Democratic debate of the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries at Drake University in January alongside CNN colleague Wolf Blitzer and Des Moines Register political correspondent Brianne Pfannenstiel.
Before joining CNN in 2017, Phillip was a national political reporter covering the 2016 election, focusing on the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s presidential run.
She currently lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, Marcus Richardson, a managing consultant at nVisium, a cybersecurity company.
Source: Stabroek News, Nov 7, 2020