CNN anchor and senior global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga, who grew up in Houston.
When she was just 18 months old, Bianna Golodryga and her parents left their native Russia as political refugees and came to the United States.
While it would have been comfortable to settle in New York or another part of the country with a large Jewish population, her parents decided against that because they wanted to assimilate into the culture and pursue what they saw as more typical American lives.
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To accomplish that, they chose to settle in the Houston suburb of Channelview, where Golodryga was the only Jewish student in her elementary school.
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CNN news anchor Bianna Golodryga during a 2018 interview.
Working multiple jobs to stay afloat, her parents couldn’t afford daycare, so they enrolled her in as many extracurricular programs as they could, including acting lessons at the nonprofit arts education organization HITS Theatre. That led Golodryga to attend the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and later the University of Texas at Austin.
Now, she’s an anchor and senior global affairs analyst for CNN after working for the likes of CBS News (where she was sent to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in her hometown), Yahoo! News, ABC, and CNBC.
CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga and Israeli journalist Yonit Levi co-authored the new book, “Don’t Feed the Lion.”
Her family’s experience as Jewish refugees informs a new book for middle grade readers about dealing with antisemitism that Golodryga co-authored with Israeli journalist Yonit Levi called Don’t Feed the Lion.
In an interview with Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty, Golodryga explains how she and her parents ended up making a life in Houston, how the city shaped her and led her to journalism, and how some particular incidents (and ensuing questions from her son) inspired the book.
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