Veronica de La Cruz

Veronica De La Cruz (born 13 August 1980) is a Filipino American television anchor formerly with CNN. In July 2010, she appeared as a late night anchor on MSNBC. At the current time, she appears on both NBC and MSNBC, primarily anchoring NBC's Early Today show and MSNBC's First Look. Lately, she has been anchoring MSNBC Live at noon after the departure of Contessa Brewer. She also makes appearances on NBC's Today show at the news desk or as a correspondent. She is pregnant with her first child.

De La Cruz formerly appeared on CNN's Emmy-nominated morning show American Morning from 6am to 9am Eastern time, providing Dotcom Desk information to CNN's early morning viewers. She also substituted as a replacement anchor for CNN U.S. and CNN Headline News. She previously anchored the CNN broadband news service, CNN Pipeline, now CNN LIVE, and was among one of four founding anchors. She became a contributor to their domestic network with the segment "Dotcom Desk", which launched during the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami. Her contributions to CNN's news coverage include reporting on Hurricane Katrina, working with the Victims and Relief desk, and numerous on-line reports with CNN broadband news. De La Cruz joined CNN in 2003 and in 2007 moved from the network's world headquarters in Atlanta to the New York Offices.

De La Cruz has also been on the forefront of new technology. She is one of the first and only cable network news journalists to shoot segments with a Flip Mino video camera, which she edits herself on a Mac. She also regularly engages in discussion with her viewers via Facebook and microblogs on Twitter.

She became increasingly popular when she started a campaign to save her brother, Eric De La Cruz's life. Eric De La Cruz needed a heart transplant but was refused due to poor health insurance. She tried raising money through social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook as well as pages that were created for her family's cause. Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor joined the cause and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mr. De La Cruz as well as bringing much needed attention to the fight for proper health insurance. Despite these efforts, Eric De La Cruz died in July 2009.