Karen Travers is a White House correspondent and senior member of the
ABC News White House team. She joined ABC News in 2000 and is
currently covering her fifth president, Donald Trump, for all ABC
platforms. She is also in her third term on the board of the White
House Correspondents’ Association. Her work can be seen across the
200 ABC News affiliate stations via ABC NewsOne, the network’s
affiliate news service, and her reporting for ABC News Radio can be
heard on 1650 radio stations and multiple digital distributors.

Travers began her career at ABC News as an intern and soon started
working as a researcher for Ted Koppel at “Nightline,” a position
she held for nearly three years, where she reported on the Sept. 11
attacks, the Iraq war, major national and international stories, as
well as sports and popular culture. Travers then served as an embedded
political reporter, covering the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and
traveling primarily with former Vice President Cheney on Air Force Two
to battleground states. She later became a producer and the
network’s deputy political director.

She has covered every major national political story and traveled to
49 states and more than 60 countries during her time at ABC News. She
has reported from key battleground states, covering primaries and
caucuses, Republican and Democratic conventions and presidential
debates in every election cycle since 2004.

Travers has also covered many major stories outside the world of
politics, including the economics of the child care industry and paid
family leave; the mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard; the
Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia; the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri,
and Baltimore, Maryland; and key Supreme Court arguments and
decisions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Travers went beyond White
House headlines to cover school closures and reopenings, the early
scramble to find vaccines, and the challenges families with young
children faced before vaccines were available.

Before reporting on the current Trump administration, she also covered
Biden’s, Trump’s first, and Obama’s administrations and spent
four years covering the 2008 election. Travers traveled as a producer
on both of former President Obama’s secret trips to Afghanistan in
2010 and as a reporter on his other trips overseas. She reported
extensively on the Obama administration’s domestic policy agenda,
including the process of developing and passing the Affordable Care
Act. She served as the deputy political director for the 2008 election
coverage, led the network’s reporting on the Democratic and
Republican delegate processes, covered key battleground states, and
reported from presidential debates and both conventions.

From December 2004 through June 2007, before joining ABC News’
political unit, Travers worked as a White House producer covering the
Bush administration. At the White House, she was responsible for ABC
News’ editorial coverage and for planning events, speeches and
breaking news. During this time, Travers traveled to Iraq and Bahrain
on a military embed and produced exclusive reports onboard the USS
Eisenhower in the North Arabian Sea. She also spent a month as a
producer in the ABC News Baghdad bureau.

Travers has been honored with two Gracie Awards by the Alliance for
Women in Media, including Outstanding Radio News Anchor. She was part
of the ABC News team that received an Emmy® Award for its coverage of
former President Obama’s inauguration. Her reporting was part of the
ABC News Radio coverage that received the Edward R. Murrow Award for
Breaking News in 2021 for President Trump’s testing positive for
COVID-19 and his hospitalization, in 2022 for the Jan. 6 riot at the
Capitol, and in 2023 for coverage of the start of the War in Ukraine.

A native of Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Travers graduated with a
bachelor’s in American government and a master’s in liberal
studies from Georgetown University.

Travers lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, John Anderson,
and their three children. In her spare time, she enjoys coaching her
children’s sports teams and volunteering with their activities,
exploring D.C., traveling to the Jersey Shore and cheering on her
Philly sports teams and the Georgetown Hoyas.
