For more than twenty five years, Margaret Larson worked as a broadcast journalist, most notably with NBC News as a foreign correspondent based in London, news anchor for the Today show and Dateline NBC reporter, and as a reporter/news anchor at KING-TV in Seattle.
Larson started her broadcast career during college, later working at NBC affiliate KCRA-TV in Sacramento, hosting a talk show and anchoring the news. From there, she was hired as a correspondent at NBC News where she worked in the Burbank bureau, the London bureau, fill-in anchor on Nightly News and the news anchor on the Today Show.
During the Kurdish refugee crisis in southern Turkey at the end of the first Persian Gulf War, she began reporting on global humanitarian crises. What she learned and experienced changed her outlook, her career and her life.
As a result, she and her husband moved to Seattle in 1993 to focus on family, settle into a community to raise their son, and find time to devote to international causes in partnership with relief agency Mercy Corps.
During this time, Larson worked as news anchor at KIRO-TV, then returned to NBC, while still living in Seattle, as a correspondent for Dateline NBC. From 1999 to 2002, she also anchored the 11pm news for KING-TV.
In 2003, she formed a communications consulting practice for international nonprofit organizations including World Vision, Mercy Corps, PATH and Global Partnerships, creating videos and online content to serve humanitarian causes.
Her aid-related work has taken her to southern Lebanon, the Kosovo crisis, Afghan refugee camps one week after the launch of the US bombardment, the most recent Iraq ground war, the South Asian tsunami and its one-year anniversary, the depths of the African AIDS pandemic, maternal/child health programs in India and Asia, and the child soldier crisis in northern Uganda.
Larson has won broadcast journalism awards including four Emmys, two national Clarion awards, three Telly awards and a national Society of Professional Journalists award. In 2004, she received the national Headliner Award from the Association of Women in Communication*. In 2005, she was named Best Voice for Humanitarianism by the Seattle Weekly newspaper. In 2007, she was selected for the Women of Vision award by the Women Work! organization in Washington D.C. And in 2008, she was chosen to create the profile videos for the global humanitarian Opus Prize awardees in Nicaragua, India, and Burundi.
Larson lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her husband Tim and son Kyle.
