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For Sumnima Udas ’01, Reporting on the Nepalese Earthquakes is Personal

Viewers of CNN know that award-winning reporter Sumnima Udas will cover with care any story on her beat — India. When she’s reporting on the recent earthquakes in Nepal, however, the 2001 graduate of Washington and Lee University brings extra depth, for she is a native of that country.

In this piece about the 7.8 earthquake that struck on April 25, she takes viewers on a tour of Katmandu, so much of it now destroyed or heavily damaged. (The May 12 quake has caused even more loss of life and destruction.)

“What’s lost is intangible,” she says in the report. “Somewhere in the back of my head, I always knew I would have to cover this story one day. An earthquake in my homeland, something I’ve always feared.”

Sumnima holds a B.A. in journalism and mass communications from W&L, and a master’s in history from Oxford. She began her career with CNN in 2001 as a news assistant, and has been full-time since 2006, as a producer in Hong Kong and then Delhi. Currently, she is CNN International’s correspondent in Delhi.

In that post, she has done extensive reporting on violence against women in India, kidney trafficking in Nepal and the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Fight MH370.

Read more about Sumnima Udas’ career and watch her reports on her CNN website.

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