Kristie Lu Stout is an award-winning anchor and correspondent for CNN, based in Hong Kong.
She reports from the newsroom and in the field on major breaking news stories including US-China relations, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the aftermath of extreme climate events in the region.
She also hosts feature programs for CNN including Tech For Good, a television and digital series on the transformative power of technology. Lu Stout is also a host for Marketplace Asia, a monthly program targeting CNN’s global audience of business leaders.
For CNN Digital and TV, she also researches and hosts in-depth reports on tech titans in Asia and conducts interviews with some of the world’s most innovative thinkers including Jane Goodall, Elon Musk, and Maria Ressa.
Based in China for two decades, Lu Stout maintains a focus on how developments in China are dramatically changing the world for all of us. From anchoring CNN’s groundbreaking Eye on China series in 2004 to covering the Trump-Xi Summit in Beijing to reporting on fresh tensions with a new U.S. administration, Lu Stout has remained committed to reporting on the country. She was also instrumental in launching On China, CNN’s first-ever regular series focused on the country – a first by any international TV news network.
Over the years, her work has been nominated for multiple categories at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards including the CNN Special Report, Witness to the Pandemic, in 2021. Lu Stout’s program Inventing Tomorrow: Tech in a Time of Pandemic was awarded Best Covid-19 Factual Feature at the 2020 Content Asia Awards. In 2020, she and her CNN Hong Kong colleagues were awarded Best Continuing News Reporting for TV and Video by the Association for International Broadcasting for team coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong Protests. In 2018, Lu Stout was awarded Best News or Current Affairs Presenter at the Asian Academy Creative Awards, while the news program she conceived and launched in 2010 – News Stream – was awarded Best News Program. Other accolades include multiple honors from the Asia Television Awards and Best News Coverage from the Royal Television Society in 2013 for coverage of Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
With over 900,000 fans and followers on social media, Lu Stout believes in engaging with her viewers and makes social media an integral part of her reporting. She also believes in contributing to the debate with viewers off-camera with regular speaking and moderating appearances and is well known for her style in stimulating frank and lively conversations.
Lu Stout also plays an active role in promoting the CNN Freedom Project, the network’s award-winning initiative focused on reporting stories of modern-day slavery, including student outreach in Hong Kong and across Asia as part of #MyFreedomDay. She is also proud to be part of CNN’s Call to Earth Day – a new global initiative to engage students on the need for urgent action against climate change and pollution.
Lu Stout started her career in journalism in San Francisco at WIRED magazine’s online division. She has written on technology for various media publications including the South China Morning Post, where she founded and wrote the Beijing Byte column. Before her career in journalism, she was an early employee at Beijing-based Internet company Sohu.com and worked for Reuters’ new media team in China.
A proud Asian American, Lu Stout is an Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) lifetime member and mentor. She is also a Correspondent Member and Correspondent Board Governor at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong. Lu Stout regularly leads conversations about current events with students off-camera with speaking engagements at universities across the world and volunteers as an undergraduate admission interviewer for her alma mater.
She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Stanford University and studied advanced Mandarin Chinese at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.