Jo Wan is from Taiwan and was among the first journalists in Taiwan’s newly opened cable television industry. In Taiwan, she mostly covered stories from the Taipei City Government and the Taiwan Legislative Yuan.

After immigrating to the United States, she continued working in Chinese-language television, serving the immigrant community.

She witnessed Taiwan’s first direct presidential election and multiple U.S. presidential elections. One of her most unforgettable reporting experiences was spending a month in Beijing covering the 2008 Olympics.

In January 2009, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama, the first African American president. Her in-depth coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election earned her the prestigious USC Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Television Political Journalism for community contributions.

In her acceptance speech, she told her fellow mainstream television journalists that winning this award was the realization of her American dream.

She once spent four months working at a Silicon Valley tech company, sitting behind a desk, only to realize that journalism was her true lifelong career.