Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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The swimmers are now leaving Japan and the spotlight moves to the track and field events at Olympic Stadium. We'll walk you through the biggest things to watch for until the closing ceremony. -
A photo of a real-life sponge and starfish hanging out together delighted the internet. But "the reality is a little crueler than perhaps a cartoon would suggest," says the researcher who posted it. -
In an outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., three-quarters of cases occurred in fully vaccinated people. The study's findings suggest that vaccinated people infected with delta can transmit the virus. -
Los Angeles joins California, New York City and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced new, more stringent policies, and possible penalties, to push vaccination among their employees. -
Gestures of protest have already begun. But exactly what's allowed under the International Olympic Committee's new rules on expression is somewhat murky. -
Cases of the variant have popped up in several states. But neither the WHO nor the CDC considers it a variant of concern, and the fast-spreading delta variant continues to dominate U.S. cases. -
The Amazon founder became the second billionaire this month to reach the edge of space — following Richard Branson, who rocketed there aboard a vessel made by his company Virgin Galactic. -
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in self-isolation following close contact with the UK health secretary, who announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Cases in the U.K. are rising fast. -
Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic 17 years ago to make space travel possible for his generation. This weekend he'll be on its first fully crewed test flight to space, beating Jeff Bezos by days. -
Life might feel like it's getting back to normal. But we're not out of the woods yet. Here's what the end of the pandemic might look like.
