About Cat

Cat Wise is an award-winning journalist, producer, and correspondent.

For the past twenty-five years, she has traveled throughout the U.S. and overseas, covering a wide range of issues for one of the country’s most trusted television news programs: PBS NewsHour. 

Cat’s coverage of the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York was part of a PBS NewsHour reporting series on the nation’s gun violence epidemic which won a Peabody Award in 2023.  

She has been a member of other award-winning PBS NewsHour reporting teams that received a National Press Club Award and were nominated for two national Emmy Awards.  Cat’s science reporting has been recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and she has participated in journalism fellowships at Harvard Medical School and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. 

Throughout her career, Cat has focused on issues impacting the health and well-being of America’s families including child care, education, mental health, substance use disorders, housing, food insecurity, the criminal justice system, childhood trauma, and environmental health concerns in homes and communities.

Cat has been the primary correspondent for two in-depth PBS NewsHour series:

• Raising the Future - American’s Child Care Dilemma

• Invisible Scars - America’s Childhood Trauma Crisis

In October 2021, Cat and producer Kate McMahon's child care reporting was expanded into a one-hour PBS primetime special.

Cat lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two sons.