Juju Chang will speak at CHOICES, presented by JEWISHcolorado Women’s Philanthropy, on January 27, 2026, at the DCPA’s Seawell Ballroom. Learn more about CHOICES and register here.
Juju Chang, one of the most prominent women in broadcast news, the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of Nightline and a regular contributor to Good Morning America and 20/20, has a superpower. It’s an incredible amount of compassion that shines through in everything she does—from always willing to lend a helping hand to inspiring others, especially with her storytelling abilities. Throughout her career reporting on the most pressing issues of our time, Chang has become a symbol of hope and resilience—shining a light on the best of humanity in the hardest of times. Byron Pitts, co-anchor of Nightline, said it best when describing his work colleague, “When there’s goodness, there’s Juju.” And everyone who has ever met her agrees.
This empathy comes from a childhood where she didn’t always feel like she belonged. Born in South Korea, she immigrated with her parents to Northern California when she was just four years old. It was a time when there were not many Asian Americans in the area. “Obviously, I was a definite minority, and I felt very different and othered,” she says.
The same held true for her family. Chang witnessed a lot of prejudice against her dad and remembers not having the words to really describe what she was seeing, but just knowing in her gut that it didn’t feel right. It felt malicious and wrong and was a perspective honed at a very young age that helped her see the world in a certain way as she went about being a journalist for the last 30 years.
An ABC News veteran, Chang joined the network as an entry-level desk assistant in 1987 after graduating with honors from Stanford University. Prior to her current roles at ABC, she was a producer for World News Tonight, a co-anchor on the overnight show World News Now and news anchor for Good Morning America. Chang’s work has been recognized with numerous awards, including multiple Emmys, Gracies, a DuPont, a Murrow and Peabody Awards. In 2017, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Front Page Awards.
Chang is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a founding board member of the Korean American Community Foundation. She also serves on the board of the 92nd Street Y (92NY). She is a recipient of the Justice in Action Award from the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund and is a pandemic gardener, devoted wife, and mother to three sons who identify as “50% Korean and 100% Jewish.”
With the rise of hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, Chang leveraged her platform to become a much-admired champion of social change. She made U.S. broadcast history co-anchoring the 2021 ABC News Live special, Stop The Hate: The Rise In Violence Against Asian Americans, alongside fellow Korean-American co-anchor Eva Pilgrim and a cast of AAPI journalists, thought leaders, lawmakers and celebrities. Chang also reported from the scene of the mass shootings at three Asian-themed spas in Atlanta, co-anchoring the ABC News 20/20 breaking news special, Murder In Atlanta.
Chang’s highly visible reporting on Asian Hate is the culmination of decades of covering everything from natural disasters to terrorism, mass shootings, immigration, violence against the LGBTQIA+ community and, most recently, the inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Opioid Epidemic. Known for her in-depth personal narratives and long-form storytelling, Chang has won acclaim for stories with underlying themes of civil and women’s rights and social justice. These include her critical examination of the controversial “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy, which she told through the eyes of one pregnant woman and her family living among the 60,000 asylum seekers camped for months along the Rio Grande. Her award-winning report, Trans and Targeted, on violence against transgender women of color, was the latest of a series of stories on the targeting of LGBTQIA+ Americans, including a GLAAD award-winning report on Matthew Shepard’s murder. Internationally, Chang has been a powerful voice on gender-based violence, including a trip through Central Africa on the front lines against Boko Haram and #bringbackourgirls. She also traveled to Honduras for Femicide: the Untold War, an eye-opening look at rampant violence against women.
In addition to reporting, Chang has profiled newsmakers like Joe Biden, Oprah Winfrey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; entertainers such as Tom Hanks, Chris Pratt and Nicki Minaj; and social media moguls Kendall Jenner and Dude Perfect.