Dawna Friesen

Anchor & Executive Editor

Dawna is anchor and executive editor of Global National, the flagship national newscast of Global News. 

During her more than 30 years as a journalist, Friesen has been everywhere from small town Canada to the front lines of history, and in 2023 was awarded the Canadian Screen Award for Best National News Anchor and Best National Newscast. 

Prior to joining Global National, Friesen was a senior foreign correspondent for NBC News, based in  London. During her 11 years there, she travelled extensively across Europe and the Middle East, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, spending months in Israel and Gaza during the Second Intifada, covering the disappearance and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, and covering events in Russia, including terrorist attacks in Moscow and Beslan, as well as too many stories about the British royals than she can count. 

While at NBC News, her work appeared on NBC Nightly News, Today and MSNBC. She also won an Emmy award for election night coverage when President Barack Obama won his first term. 

Prior to that, Friesen worked her way up through the ranks as a journalist in Canada, including as a Parliamentary correspondent for CTV News, a national reporter in Toronto and back-up host for Canada AM, a reporter for CBC News in Saskatoon and Vancouver, and at radio and TV stations in Brandon, Manitoba, Thunder Bay and Winnipeg. 

Friesen returned from London in 2010 to join Global National and has since anchored multiple breaking new stories on location, including the death of Queen Elizabeth, the mass shooting on the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, the shooting at the mosque in Quebec City, the wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and the terrorist attack in Paris, France. She also travels to Washington DC to cover every American Presidential election and anchors the live coverage of every federal election in Canada.  

Born in Winnipeg, Friesen grew up on a prairie grain farm and studied communications and journalism at Red River College. In 1993, she received a Southam Fellowship for Journalists from the University of Toronto and in 2009, the Distinguished Alumni Award from Red River College. 

In 2019, she was awarded the Canadian Screen Award for Best National News Anchor, and in 2015, Global National won Best National Newscast. In 2013, Global National was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Overall Excellence Award for Network Radio and Television, becoming the first Canadian program to earn that recognition in the award’s 42-year history.  In 2011, Friesen won the Gemini Award (now CSA) for Canada’s Best News Anchor. 

Friesen is an advocate for the Alzheimer Society of Canada. She believes the more you know the less you fear and always tries to keep learning. She enjoys gardening, cooking, reading, playing the piano (badly), travelling, and laughing with friends.