Rachel Smolkin is senior vice president of global news for CNN Digital Worldwide, where she leads the breaking news, US, politics, EMEA, and APAC coverage and teams across CNN’s global digital platforms.

Smolkin’s leadership brings together the core promise of CNN’s journalism as a united, global news team serving audiences everywhere. Working across the entire organization, she helps connect the biggest stories facing our world today including the pandemic, climate crisis, equality and human rights, and elevate those to a global scale.

Smolkin ran US-based national, politics, and breaking news teams the year prior as vice president of news for CNN Digital, after spending 6 years at the helm of CNN Politics.

Previously as the vice president and executive editor of CNN Politics, Smolkin oversaw the network’s coverage of Washington, politics and elections. In this role she led the creation of CNN’s politics brand in the digital space, hiring and building a team of more than 50 reporters, editors and social producers into the No. 1 politics site for three years and counting, per ComScore. She also partnered on industry-leading television-digital integration in CNN’s Washington bureau and also oversees the KFile investigative unit.

Smolkin is a graduate of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University and holds a bachelor’s degree from Brown University, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Before coming to CNN, she was managing editor at Politico, where she oversaw the daily news report. She also has worked as an editor at USA Today and managing editor of American Journalism Review magazine.

Smolkin lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and two children.