Dawna Friesen

Friesen was raised on a farm west of Winnipeg; her parents were nonobservant Mennonites. Her father had her work on the farm, and she learned how to drive a tractor when she was six. Her mother was active in local politics. She graduated from Red River College and worked as a waitress when she was young. She re-married on July 28, 2018, to Rick Anderson after she divorced Tom Kennedy.

Both of her parents developed dementia, and in 2014 Friesen was featured in a 16×9 program about dementia and how families cope with it.

In 2010 Friesen joined Global News as their Global National anchor, succeeding Kevin Newman. Friesen was the first full-time female news anchor to lead a nightly newscast in Canada. In 2011 she won the Gemini Award for best news anchor.

By the late 1990s she was recruited by national networks in Canada and the US and joined NBC News. While at NBC, Friesen covered stories out of London as well as the Middle East, including the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi. She won an Emmy for her part in NBC's coverage of Barack Obama election as US President.

She started reading news at a hybrid television and radio station in Brandon, Manitoba, in 1985 and from there went on to report for other stations in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto.