Jeannette Reyes Biography: Former News Anchor, Career, Education, and Digital Media

Jeannette Reyes is an American former television news anchor, reporter, digital content creator, speaker, and podcast host. After beginning her journalism career in Little Rock, Arkansas, she worked in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and later returned to the Washington market as a morning anchor for FOX 5 DC.

Reyes gradually developed a second audience through social media while she was still working in television. Her videos often applied the polished cadence of a television anchor to ordinary conversations, workplace observations, and family situations. This format helped establish her online identity as “Ms. News Lady.”

She left full-time television news in 2023 after approximately 12 years in journalism. Her subsequent work has included digital content, brand storytelling, public speaking, the Awf the Record podcast, and Primed to Pivot, a career-transition guide based partly on her experience moving away from traditional broadcasting.

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Featured Snippet: Jeannette Reyes at a Glance

Who is Jeannette Reyes?

Jeannette Reyes is a former local television reporter and news anchor who worked at KATV, WJLA, WPVI-TV and WTTG-TV. She is now a digital creator, speaker and podcast host known online as Ms. News Lady. She also co-hosts Awf the Record with Mona Kosar Abdi.

Where did Jeannette Reyes work as a news anchor?

Reyes began her professional career at KATV in Little Rock before becoming a general-assignment reporter at WJLA in Washington, D.C. She later reported and anchored for WPVI-TV, also known as 6ABC, in Philadelphia. From 2020 until 2023, she anchored morning programming at FOX 5 DC.

Why did Jeannette Reyes leave FOX 5 DC?

Reyes left FOX 5 DC and traditional television news in 2023 to pursue a different professional direction. Her public accounts describe the move as a planned career pivot rather than an abrupt departure. She subsequently expanded her work in content creation, podcasting, speaking, digital products and commercial storytelling.

What is Jeannette Reyes doing now?

Reyes currently works across digital media and independent content. She co-hosts the culture and society podcast Awf the Record, publishes personal and career-focused material, collaborates with brands and speaks about career transitions and personal branding. She also created Primed to Pivot, a digital resource for people considering major changes.

How old is Jeannette Reyes?

Reyes’s exact age has not been reliably confirmed through the primary and institutional sources reviewed for this biography. Some third-party websites publish a birthday or age, but such listings should not be treated as established fact without confirmation from Reyes, an official profile or a dependable public record.

Jeannette Reyes Profile Summary

Early Life and Background

Jeannette Reyes was born and raised in Rhode Island in a Dominican family. Her official biography states that her parents’ background and Dominican heritage shaped her perspective. Other published professional profiles have identified Providence as her hometown.

Publicly available accounts do not provide a detailed, independently documented account of her childhood. Reyes has discussed her cultural background, family and personal interests through her own platforms, but she has not made every element of her early life part of her public professional record.

Her later media work has reflected aspects of this background. She has addressed multicultural identity, code-switching and the representation of natural hair in broadcasting. These subjects became relevant to both her journalism and her social-media content.

Education at Kent State University

Reyes attended Kent State University and graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Sources describe the concentration as journalism or broadcast journalism.

She did not initially enter Kent State with a fixed plan to become a broadcast journalist. According to the university’s alumni profile, she began as an exploratory student and considered journalism after receiving encouragement from a friend. The university’s practical broadcasting program allowed her to gain several years of on-air experience before beginning her professional career.

As a student, Reyes worked as a reporter and anchor for TV2, Kent State’s student-run television operation. In 2012, she received the top television finalist award in the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program Broadcast Features Competition. Her investigative report about online employment scams placed first among 73 entries from 43 schools and earned a scholarship.

The recognition demonstrated early ability in reporting, interviewing and public-interest storytelling. It also provided a credible professional foundation before her move into local television.

Career and Professional Journey

Beginning at KATV in Little Rock

After graduating in 2012, Reyes began her television career as a reporter at KATV, an ABC-affiliated station in Little Rock, Arkansas. The position gave her experience in daily reporting, field production and live television.

Local television often requires early-career journalists to cover a wide range of assignments. Reyes’s work in Little Rock formed the first stage of a career that would later take her into larger media markets.

Reporting at WJLA in Washington, D.C.

Reyes later joined WJLA, the ABC affiliate serving Washington, D.C., as a general-assignment reporter. The move placed her in a market shaped by federal politics, regional government, transportation, public safety and diverse local communities.

Her role at WJLA expanded her experience in a major metropolitan newsroom. It also established professional and personal ties to the Washington area, which would become important later in her career.

WPVI and 6ABC Philadelphia

Reyes joined WPVI-TV in Philadelphia in 2016. At the ABC-owned station, widely known as 6ABC, she worked as a reporter and anchor for Action News.

Her assignments included weather events, health reporting, community stories, cultural coverage and breaking news. Published 6ABC reports show her covering subjects ranging from severe storms and medical developments to Black-owned businesses and regional events.

Philadelphia represented a significant step in her broadcast career. WPVI operates in one of the largest television markets in the United States, giving Reyes broader visibility and experience within a prominent local-news organization.

Return to Washington and FOX 5 DC

In December 2020, Reyes joined WTTG-TV as a weekday morning co-anchor. She appeared on FOX 5 Morning News and Good Day DC, anchoring several hours of morning programming.

The position brought her back to Washington, where her husband, journalist Robert Burton, was also working in television news. Her role combined traditional anchoring, interviews and community coverage with a growing public presence on social platforms.

Reyes remained at FOX 5 until announcing her departure in December 2023. Her official website describes the move as a pivot away from news rather than a transfer to another television station.

Leaving Traditional Television News

Reyes has said that she prepared for her transition before leaving the anchor desk. She had already built a substantial digital audience and developed skills that could be applied outside a newsroom, including interviewing, public speaking, writing, video production and audience communication.

Her move illustrates a broader professional pattern in which media workers establish direct relationships with audiences rather than relying exclusively on a television station or publication. In Reyes’s case, the change was supported by an online identity that had developed alongside her broadcasting career.

This context does not indicate that her journalism career was unsuccessful. Instead, the available evidence presents the departure as a deliberate change in how she wanted to produce, distribute and control her work.

Digital Media Career

Development of the Ms. News Lady Identity

Reyes began attracting significant attention on TikTok in 2020 while she was still working in television. One early viral video featured Reyes and Robert Burton using their broadcast voices to discuss what to eat for dinner.

The humor came from placing formal anchor delivery in an ordinary domestic setting. Reyes later adapted the format to conversations about friendships, spam calls, marriage, work and family life.

The videos also had a more analytical element. Reyes has explained that the original idea was connected to code-switching—the way people may alter their speech or presentation depending on their professional and social environment.

Audience Growth

By 2021, Washingtonian reported that Reyes had reached one million TikTok followers. Her content was also featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, increasing her recognition beyond local-news audiences.

Her current Instagram biography lists approximately 1.7 million TikTok followers. Her Instagram account displayed about 738,000 followers in June 2026. Because social-media totals change frequently, these figures should always be presented with a date rather than as permanent statistics.

Reyes’s content now extends beyond broadcast humor. It includes career observations, motherhood, family, beauty, travel, cultural identity and behind-the-scenes discussions about digital work.

Brand Storytelling and Professional Positioning

On LinkedIn, Reyes describes her career as a move from anchoring news to telling stories for brands and subjects she chooses. Her work combines journalism-derived communication skills with commercial content, partnerships and personal publishing.

The transition shows the practical value of transferable media skills. Reporting requires research, concise writing, visual communication, deadline management and trust-building. These same abilities can support podcasting, social campaigns, public speaking and independent media production.

Awf the Record Podcast

Reyes co-hosts Awf the Record with former television journalist Mona Kosar Abdi. The podcast features conversations with cultural figures, media professionals and other guests working across entertainment, business and public life.

Its official description places the program at the intersection of media, culture and society. The conversational format differs from a standard news broadcast, allowing the hosts to discuss professional experiences and cultural issues with fewer structural limits than a scheduled television segment.

The podcast is an important part of Reyes’s post-news career because it preserves several elements of her journalism background. Interview preparation, follow-up questions and topical framing remain central, while the tone is more personal and informal.

Primed to Pivot

Reyes created Primed to Pivot: Your Guide to What’s Next, a 75-page digital guide about managing significant professional or personal changes. The product presents exercises and planning frameworks based partly on the process Reyes used before leaving television.

The guide includes a “Pivot Audit,” a planning stage and an execution framework. Its stated purpose is to help readers assess their current position, identify a direction and organize the practical steps needed for a transition.

Claims about the commercial results of Reyes’s own business appear on her website but are self-reported. They should not be presented as independently audited financial facts. The verifiable point is that Primed to Pivot forms part of her current educational and entrepreneurial work.

Major Achievements and Recognition

Reyes’s most clearly documented early recognition came from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s journalism competition. Her first-place broadcast feature in 2012 demonstrated investigative reporting ability before she entered professional television.

Professionally, she advanced from a regional reporting position in Little Rock to major television markets in Washington and Philadelphia. Working at WJLA, WPVI and WTTG placed her in established newsrooms with large and diverse audiences.

Her digital growth is another measurable achievement. She built a following that reached one million TikTok users while she was still a full-time anchor, showing that her audience did not emerge only after she left television.

In 2021, Washingtonian included Reyes among its notable TikTok personalities in the Washington area. She was also selected for HOLA! USA’s 2022 Latina Powerhouse list. Such recognition reflects her combined profile as a journalist, Afro-Latina media figure and digital creator.

Personal Life

Jeannette Reyes is married to television journalist Robert Burton. Their relationship has occasionally appeared in public interviews and social-media videos, particularly because both have worked as news anchors.

The couple publicly announced the birth of their daughter, Isabella Sofia Burton, in 2022. Reyes now discusses selected aspects of motherhood and family life in her content, while retaining control over how much personal information she shares.

Her family has also participated in some of her independent media work. In a 2025 newsletter, Reyes wrote that her husband and siblings had taken on roles connected with the family’s content and business activities.

These details come from information that Reyes and her family have chosen to make public. Private relationship matters, household finances and information about non-public relatives should not be inferred from social-media posts.

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Philanthropy and Public Engagement

Reyes’s official website identifies charitable and community work as part of her public mission. It names Carpenter’s Shelter and Hogar Infantil Corazón de Jesús among the organizations connected with her social-impact activities.

Hogar Infantil Corazón de Jesús is described on her website as a children’s home in the Dominican Republic with a long-standing connection to her family. Reyes states that fundraising conducted in 2025 helped support immediate needs and longer-term services, including beds, food, education and emotional care.

These descriptions come primarily from Reyes’s organization rather than an independently published financial report. It is therefore appropriate to document the initiative while clearly attributing claims about its results to her official platform.

Her other forms of public engagement include speaking about women in media, career transitions, personal branding and the use of social platforms for professional impact.

Public Perception

Reyes’s public image is shaped by two related forms of communication. Her television career established her as a trained journalist with experience in reporting, interviewing and live broadcasting. Her social-media content introduced a more informal presentation built around humor, family and behind-the-scenes explanations of journalism.

Kent State’s profile of Reyes noted that she viewed social media as a way to challenge impersonal stereotypes about journalists. Her videos frequently showed the technical and everyday realities of broadcasting, including teleprompter operation, wardrobe choices and preparation away from the camera.

Her digital appeal can therefore be understood as an extension of her broadcast identity rather than a complete rejection of it. The same voice, timing and presentation skills that served television news became the central features of her online work.

Public response cannot be reduced to a universal opinion. However, documented audience growth and repeated media coverage indicate that her combination of professional delivery and accessible humor reached people beyond the local markets where she worked.

Misconceptions About Jeannette Reyes

Jeannette Reyes is still a FOX 5 news anchor

Reyes is a former FOX 5 DC anchor. She left the station and full-time television news in 2023. Later guest appearances or interviews with FOX 5 do not mean that she returned to her previous anchoring position.

Her social-media career began after she left journalism

Reyes’s digital following developed while she was still a working television journalist. Her anchor-voice videos began gaining attention in 2020, and she had reached approximately one million TikTok followers by 2021.

She left television because her journalism career had failed

Available first-person accounts do not support that interpretation. Reyes worked in several established news markets and held a prominent morning-anchor position. She has described her departure as a planned professional transition toward independent content and business opportunities.

Online listings confirm her birthday and age

An exact birth date is frequently repeated on third-party biography websites, but dependable primary sources reviewed for this article do not confirm it. Her age should therefore be described as unverified unless she publishes the information directly or it appears in an authoritative record.

Privacy and Limited Public Information

Although Reyes maintains an active online presence, significant parts of her biography remain private. Reliable public sources do not clearly establish her exact date of birth, current age or a complete account of her childhood.

Her salary during her television career, present income, business valuation and net worth have not been independently disclosed. Estimates published by celebrity-finance websites should not be treated as factual.

Reyes has discussed her marriage, daughter, parents and siblings in selected public content. That does not make all details about those relationships publicly relevant. A responsible biography should distinguish between information deliberately shared for public discussion and details that remain personal.

Current follower counts, professional titles and commercial projects should also be dated and reviewed periodically because they can change.

Legacy and Influence

Because Jeannette Reyes remains professionally active, it is more accurate to discuss her developing influence than to assign a final legacy.

Her career demonstrates how broadcast-journalism skills can be adapted to creator-led media. She used professional voice control, concise storytelling and camera experience to develop a recognizable short-form video format. She later extended that audience into podcasting, newsletters, speaking and educational products.

Reyes’s work also contributes to discussions about representation in media. Her public treatment of Afro-Latina identity, Dominican heritage, code-switching and natural hair has connected personal experience with broader questions about who appears on television and how professionalism is defined.

Her transition is especially relevant within a changing media economy. Journalists increasingly have the ability to build audiences independently, but doing so requires business planning, platform knowledge and a willingness to work outside conventional newsroom structures. Reyes’s career offers a documented example of that shift without suggesting that the same path is suitable for every journalist.

Frequently Asked Questions

What degree does Jeannette Reyes have?

Reyes earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Kent State University in 2012. Professional sources sometimes describe her field more specifically as broadcast journalism.

What stations did Jeannette Reyes work for?

She worked at KATV in Little Rock, WJLA in Washington, WPVI/6ABC in Philadelphia and WTTG/FOX 5 DC. Her roles included general-assignment reporting, anchoring and morning-news presentation.

Is Jeannette Reyes married?

Yes. She is married to television journalist Robert Burton. The couple have appeared together in interviews and viral social-media videos that use their professional news-anchor voices.

Does Jeannette Reyes have children?

Yes. Reyes and Burton have one publicly acknowledged daughter, Isabella Sofia Burton, who was born in 2022.

What is Jeannette Reyes’s podcast?

Reyes co-hosts Awf the Record with Mona Kosar Abdi. The podcast covers topics related to media, culture, society, professional life and the experiences of its guests.

Conclusion

Jeannette Reyes built her professional foundation through formal journalism education at Kent State University and reporting positions at KATV, WJLA, WPVI and WTTG. She became a recognizable morning anchor at FOX 5 DC while simultaneously developing a large digital following through the Ms. News Lady identity.

After leaving television news in 2023, she expanded into content creation, podcasting, public speaking, brand storytelling and career-transition education. Her current work retains many of the communication skills developed in journalism while operating through independent digital platforms.

Her Rhode Island upbringing, Dominican family background, Kent State education, broadcast career, marriage to Robert Burton and departure from television are supported by public sources. Her exact birthday, age, earnings and net worth remain unconfirmed and should not be presented as established facts.