Award-winning reporter Lisa Salters of ESPN will present the commencement address for the Penn State College of Communications during exercises May 6 at the Bryce Jordan Center on the University Park campus.
Salters handles high-profile assignments for ESPN -- including her role as a sideline reporter for “Monday Night Football” and for NBA games on ABC and ESPN. She also contributes to a variety of ESPN studio shows and serves as a featured correspondent on the network’s award-winning news magazine, “E:60.”
Salters, who was named an Alumni Fellow at the University in 2007, joined ESPN as a general assignment reporter in March 2000. She has covered the NBA since 2005 and was the sideline reporter for ABC’s “Saturday Night Football” college football games for five seasons (2006-10). She joined “Monday Night Football” in 2012.
An “E:60” correspondent since the series launched in 2007, Salters earned both a Gracie Award from the Association for Women in Radio and Television for best feature in 2009 and a Sports Emmy nomination for the touching story “Ray of Hope” in 2008. She also traveled to Haiti for a powerful story on the U17 national women’s soccer team just months after the country was devastated by an earthquake in 2010.
Salters’ journalistic assignments the past three decades have brought her to major global events around the world. She covered the U.S. national team during the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea/Japan. She reported from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, and hosted ESPN’s coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. In addition, Salters covered sports-related stories in and around U.S. Central Command in Qatar for “Outside the Lines,” “SportsCenter” and ESPNEWS during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom through the commencement of the war. She returned to the war zone in 2004 when ESPN brought “SportsCenter” to Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait.
Before arriving at ESPN, Salters worked for ABC News from 1995 to 2000. Based in Los Angeles, she was named the first West Coast correspondent for the ABC affiliate news service, NewsOne, in February 1995. She covered the O.J. Simpson civil and criminal trials, the Oklahoma City bombing trials, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the crash of TWA flight 800, among other major stories for “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings” and other ABC News outlets.
Earlier in her career, Salters served as a general assignment reporter for WBAL-TV, the NBC affiliate in Baltimore, where she covered national and international news, including the conflicts in the African countries of Rwanda and Somalia. Salters returned to Rwanda in the spring of 2012 with The Girl Effect initiative to teach young girls about journalism.
A native of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, Salters graduated from Penn State in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. She played guard for the women’s basketball team from 1986 to 1987.
She has been a consistent supporter of the College of Communications, serving as a mentor for students and regularly participating in student-focused programming during visits to campus. She has also provided scholarship support for students.
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