undergraduate commencement Speaker
Laura Garcia-Cannon ’91
Read the 2008 commencement address (PDF)
Laura Garcia-Cannon is an award-winning television journalist at NBC 11 in San Jose. She co-anchors the weekday morning newscast with her husband, Brent Cannon. The anchor team has been nominated for an Emmy award for the best daytime newscast in the Bay Area every year since 2000, and won the honor for the past three years. They have also been recognized twice for similar awards by Bay Area Women in Radio and Television.
After receiving a bachelor’s of art degree in communications and government at Saint Mary’s College in 1991, Laura began her career in journalism in San Francisco and Fresno. As an investigative reporter and anchor in Phoenix, Arizona, she received the Associated Press Reporter of the Year Award as well as multiple Emmy Award nominations and AP awards for writing and reporting.
In 2007, Laura won a Northern California Emmy Award for education feature for her NBC11 television broadcast about the De Marillac Academy in San Francisco. The segment, titled "The Gift of Education,” examined how the school is transforming the lives of children in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
Laura, who now lives in San Jose, grew up in the Central California town of Porterville. Her interest in the media began in high school when she was one of two students statewide chosen to anchor and host a student-run television program from Sacramento.
She serves on the Saint Mary’s College of California Board of Regents, is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and sits on the Board of Directors for the Catholic Professional Business Club. She previously served as a Central California board member of the Make a Wish Foundation and on the southwest chapter board of the National Television Academy of Arts and Sciences.
