Omar Jimenez

Omar Jimenez
Born	(1993-11-27) November 27, 1993 Worcester, Massachusetts
Education	Northwestern University
Occupation	Journalist
Employer	CNN
Home town	Kennesaw, Georgia

Omar Jimenez (born November 27, 1993) is an American reporter and correspondent working for CNN.

Early life

Jimenez was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and raised in Kennesaw, Georgia. He attended Kennesaw Mountain High School. Jimenez is Afro-Latino; his mother, Jayne Morgan, is African-American, and his father, Omar Jimenez, is Colombian. He has two brothers. When he was in sixth grade, his parents divorced, and he lived with his mother. He played basketball in high school, though fractured his back and could not play for eight months. He attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he majored in broadcast journalism. He played on the men's varsity basketball team from 2011 to 2013 at Northwestern after walking on to the team.

Career

He began his career in journalism as an intern in NBC News' Chicago bureau. He started working on-air as a multimedia journalist at WGEM-TV in Quincy, Illinois, and later as a reporter and fill-in anchor at WBAL-TV in Baltimore, Maryland. Jimenez worked at WBAL from July 2015 to June 2017.

Jimenez has worked at CNN since 2017, first at CNN Newsource in Washington, D.C. He has reported for over 900 CNN affiliate news stations nationwide covering breaking news. He is now based in Chicago as a CNN correspondent.

In May 2020, he was detained live on air while covering the reaction to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota during the Twin Cities riots. He was detained as part of a three-person news crew, along with producer Bill Kirkos and camera operator Leonel Mendez. They were released only 60 minutes later, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz apologized to CNN President Jeff Zucker for the incident.

Awards and honors

At Northwestern, he won various national and regional student awards for reporting such as the National Mark of Excellence Award for student television reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists and a Bronze award from the National College Emmys in the newscast category.

While working at WBAL-TV, Jimenez received an individual Emmy nomination for general assignment reporting.

Personal life

Jimenez enjoys rap and hip-hop, and has released music on SoundCloud under the name OJ Tropicana. In 2013, he appeared on a "Battle of the Instant Rappers" segment on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

See also

• List of CNN personnel

External links

• CNN profile page
• Omar Jimenez at the Internet Movie Database