Cathy Straight is Vice President of Consumer Content, CNN Digital Products and Services, overseeing content that expands beyond hard news coverage.

Straight works to align and amplify CNN’s content diversity across its worldwide digital platforms. She leads coverage teams on key beats such as wellness, travel, style, space, relationships, identity and culture, as well as the global team that creates essential photography, data reporting, motion design and interactive storytelling for CNN’s digital platforms.

IIn life before CNN, Straight was a reporter covering various beats including local news, features and entertainment before moving into leadership roles. She was Senior Assignment Editor for the national news team at USA Today, Managing Editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Assistant Managing Editor at The Tennessean. In 2005 she was part of a Knight Ridder team of journalists dispatched to the Mississippi Gulf Coast for local and national coverage of Hurricane Katrina for the Sun Herald newspaper, whose coverage won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

At CNN Straight previously held the role of executive editor of national news, overseeing digital coverage of the top U.S. national news stories of the day for nearly seven years.

Straight, a native of Mississippi, holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern Mississippi, where she was inducted into the School of Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame in 2007.