LaCrai Mitchell is a Floridian through and through. She was born in Tallahassee, Florida to parents who are proud alumni of Florida A&M University. However, when it was time to apply to college herself, attending the home of the Rattlers had never even crossed her mind. Mitchell aspired to attend other HBCU’s like Howard University, Hampton University, and Spelman College.
During her senior year of high school, she was a part of her county school board and served as a student representative. After being featured in a profile on the Tallahassee Democrat, schools like FAMU and Florida State University questioned why a rising star like LaCrai was not applying to their school. After having a conversation with her mother who was also a teacher at her high school, and receiving an application waiver from FAMU, LaCrai decided to apply. She said, “I toured the facility and I fell in love on sight. It felt like home.” After spending four years at Florida A&M’s School of Journalism, Mitchell graduated with a degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in Spanish. As she fondly reminisced on her time as a student in what she refers to as the “J School” she said, “Attending FAMU was the best decision I never made for myself”.
During her time as a student at FAMU, LaCrai Mitchell interned with CBS News for two summer. She began working her first professional position as a full time News Associate for 48 Hours immediately after graduating from college. She said, “I graduated college in December of 2015, and I started at CBS on January 4th of 2016. After being at 48 Hours, I then became a Production Associate for the evening news when Scott Pelley was the anchor, and then I was hired at 60 Minutes as a Broadcast Associate and Bill Whitaker’s assistant, where I spent most of my time working until this current role.”
LaCrai Mitchell is now a campaign reporter and political embed for CBS News. She expressed how she originally missed the application deadline for the embed position due to being so focused on everything that she was working on at 60 Minutes. She said, “after talking to Bill Whitaker who is one of my mentors about what I want to do long-term, he told me that I would get invaluable experience in this role as a campaign reporter and political unit embed.” Mitchell expressed her gratitude for this advice. She said, “He was completely right. I’ve learned so much in this past year and a half that I can’t even begin to explain how much more confident that I am in my abilities because of all that we’ve had to do on the trail.
During her time as a campaign reporter and political embed, LaCrai has been responsible for many tasks which she lists as, “shooting campaign events, logging, writing, and meeting voters across the country that have ever important stories.” She continued, “This has been such an incredible experience and I was able to get here because of all the steps that I took with CBS.”
When asked to elaborate on her long term goal, Mitchell responded, “I would love to produce documentaries that are about what we call socioeconomic issues of our time, that delve into how housing, education, the neighborhood you grew up in, and how much money your family makes are all interconnected in every aspect of our lives.” She emphasized the importance of journalism by saying, “even with all of these technological advancements, the crux of storytelling is to be accurate, and to always be fair.” She continued, “without us and our platforms, people in Minnesota wouldn’t know what’s happening in Florida or Georgia. Our craft allows for people across the country and the world to know what’s happening outside of their backyard.”
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