Christal Hayes is a Breaking News Editor for CNN Digital based in Los Angeles where she focuses on national news.

Before joining CNN at the start of 2023, Christal spent much of her career as an award-winning reporter – chronicling the devastation of mass shootings from the ground, natural disasters from boats and helicopters and political history when she was in the room for two presidential impeachments and reported from the insurrection at the US Capitol.

She started her career in Florida as a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel, where she was part of the team that won a National Headliner Award and were named finalists for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Reporting for coverage of the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016.

At the Sentinel, Christal was the first reporter at a number of tragedies that marked an incredibly dark week for the city of Orlando in June 2016. She was there when “The Voice” singer Christina Grimmie was killed by a fan during a concert – later chronicling the tragedy in an exclusive, in-depth piece that included the first interviews with her family and never-before-seen photos and police reports. Two days later – June 12 – she was the first for the paper to report to Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were gunned down inside an LGBTQ nightclub. Another two days later, she broke the story of a little boy who was killed by an alligator at a Disney World resort.

She’s worked as a national breaking news reporter for Newsweek in New York City and in Washington, DC, where she worked as both a reporter and editor at USA TODAY. Christal broke several stories while covering Congress for USA TODAY, including shedding light on then-President Donald Trump’s plan to woo Republicans before his first impeachment trial – offering movie nights, visits to Camp David and even autographing a Trump board game for one lawmaker. She also gave readers a rare glimpse into the personal notes of US senators taken during Trump’s first impeachment trial in a special front-page story.

She’s been a National Press Foundation Paul Miller fellow, a Journalism & Women Symposium fellow and presented at various journalism conferences across the country.