Biography
Master of Ceremonies
Wendy Tokuda
Wendy Tokuda is an award-winning journalist who worked as a prime-time news anchor in local television for almost 40 years, primarily at CBS station KPIX5 in San Francisco. Her signature series on low-income kids, Students Rising Above, earned a Peabody Award, a national Emmy Award, and the national Sigma Delta Chi Award.
She has won seven regional Emmy Awards for reporting and numerous lifetime achievement awards, including the Governor’s Award from the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences, the NORCAL Radio and TV News Directors Lifetime Achievement Award, and the AP Stan Chambers Award for Extraordinary Achievement.
Ms. Tokuda began her career as a reporter at KING5 news in Seattle and went on to anchor prime-time evening newscasts for KPIX CBS5 and KRON4 in San Francisco and NBC4 in Los Angeles. She was the first Asian American to anchor weekday primetime newscasts in San Francisco.
Students Rising Above led to the creation of a nonprofit by the same name, which has raised millions of dollars to help send first-generation students to college. Ms. Tokuda is also the author of two children’s books with Richard Hall: Shiro in Love and Humphrey the Lost Whale, which remains in print after more than 20 years.