Jo Ling Kent

Jo Ling Kent was born in San Francisco, California to Shean Yen Janice Kent and David Kent,[4] and raised in Minnetonka, Minnesota. There, she attended Hopkins High School.[5] She was an undergraduate at Rice University, and earned graduate degrees in international affairs from both the London School of Economics and Peking University.[3][6][7][8] Kent was also a Fulbright scholar at Peking University Law School Center.[1][4]

In 2008, after graduating college, Kent worked as a translator and writer for ABC News in Beijing. Kent would return to Beijing to work for CNN as an associate producer after graduating from the London School of Economics.[8] In 2012, Kent joined NBC's affiliate WVIT in Connecticut as a field reporter and blogger.[9] There she extensively covered the 2012 presidential election as an embedded reporter, and her team won a Peabody Award for coverage of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.[6] She joined Fox Business Network in 2013, as a technology reporter.[3][7][10]

Since 2016, Kent has been a correspondent with NBC News. In June 2020, Kent was in the field reporting on the George Floyd protests in Seattle, Washington when she was hit on-air by a flash-bang grenade from the Seattle Police Department.[2][11][12] The device burnt part of her clothing but she was not significantly injured.[11]

Kent has been married to Scott Conroy, an author and reporter for HuffPost, since 2015.[4] The couple had one child in 2018, and announced in December 2020 that they are expecting a second.[1]

She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese.[3]

Jo Ling Kent on Muck Rack