Yamiche Léone Alcindor Cline has quickly established herself as one of the country’s most prominent African American journalists. Alcindor was born on November 1, 1986, in Miami, Florida, to Hatien parents. Her parents were from Plaisance and St. Louis du Nord, Haiti, and attended Boston College. In 2005, Alcindor graduated from Fort Lauderdale High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She interned at the Miami Herald and the Westside Gazette, a weekly newspaper in Fort Lauderdale, while in high school. During this time, Alcindor became interested in pursuing a career in journalism, especially after learning about the historic lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, in 1955.
She attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., after graduating, where she minored in African American studies and earned a bachelor of arts degree in English and government in 2009. She joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority during her undergraduate years.
Beginning in 2012, Alcindor covered the murder trial of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida in 2013. Alcindor received a master of arts degree in broadcasting news and documentary filmmaking from New York University in 2015. She worked as a national political reporter for The New York Times and produced the documentary The Trouble with Innocence while at NYU. She was named a political contributor to NBC News and MSNBC the following year, in 2016.
Alcindor received the Toner Prize, named after the legendary African American journalist Gwen Ifill, in 2017. Alcindor married Nathaniel Cline, an award-winning Hatien American journalist born in Virginia, on March 15, 2018 in Miami. Soon after, she was named White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour.
Two years later, in 2020, she was asked to moderate the sixth Democratic presidential debate, which was held on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Alcindor also received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence in White House Coverage that year.
She was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ 2020 Journalist of the Year, as well as the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2020 Gwen Ifill Award.
NBCUniversal hired Yamiche Léone Alcindor Cline as a Washington correspondent in 2022. Her commitment to PBS’ “Washington Week” will, however, continue.