Patrick Oppmann serves as CNN's Havana-based correspondent, responsible for covering Cuba and the surrounding region for all of the network's platforms.

In addition to his reporting, Oppmann regularly shoots and edits his stories. He is fluent in Spanish, and has traveled widely throughout Latin America.

On December 17, 2014, Oppmann was the only reporter for a U.S. television network to report live from Cuba when the historic announcement was made that the U.S. government would change its policy towards Cuba and seek to reestablish full diplomatic ties with the island's communist government.

Oppmann broke the story that as part of the shift in policy, the U.S. government secretly helped a Cuban spy serving life in a U.S. federal prison to impregnate his wife -- who was living in Cuba -- by artificial insemination.

In 2014, Oppmann was also the first reporter to interview and film Cuban doctors preparing to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

While tracking the movements of a fugitive couple who kidnapped their children in Florida in 2013, Oppmann located the Hakken family in Cuba after they had sailed to Havana during a custody dispute. The couple was later returned to the U.S. by Cuban officials and convicted of kidnapping.

The same year, Oppmann gained exclusive access to a hospital in Cuba that was battling the first outbreak of cholera on the island in over a century.

In 2010, Oppmann spent weeks reporting from the remote site where desperate efforts were underway to rescue 33 trapped Chilean miners. During that assignment, Oppmann regularly broke news about the rescue operation's progress and was among the first reporters to speak with several of the miners after they were successfully pulled from the mine.

Oppmann also contributed to CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill, and spent weeks traveling from Louisiana to Florida to report on oil's impact on people living in the region.

Oppmann joined CNN in 2000 as an assignment editor and then field producer with the network's Miami Bureau. While in Miami, he covered a wide range of stories including the loss of the Columbia Space Shuttle, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. He moved to the network's Seattle bureau in 2009, where he covered a number of stories for all CNN platforms.

Oppmann's reporting has also been featured in The Christian Science Monitor, The St. Petersburg Times, The Buenos Aires Herald, TIME Magazine and on National Public Radio. He is a graduate of Duke University, where he majored in Spanish and Latin American studies.

Follow Patrick on Twitter @CNN_Oppmann.