About Tanya McRae
Tanya was born in New York City, and grew up in Amherst and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she played on the Women’s Varsity Basketball team and was a member of the Equestrian Team, and attained a BA degree from the Annenberg School for Communication.
She began her career in television as an assignment desk assistant at ABC World News Tonight and Nightline in New York. She went on to be a producer, reporter and anchor in news, as well as a producer and field director on a variety of lifestyle, travel, newsmagazine, talk and reality shows.
Tanya’s news experience includes being a reporter at Paragon Cable in New York, host and producer of “In Host Pursuit” at Torrance CitiCable, a producer for Channel One News, a reporter for KMIR 6 in Palm Springs, and an anchor and multimedia journalist at the Spectrum News 1 network in Los Angeles. She is currently an anchor at SN1 and the host of “In Focus SoCal”, which won the 2024 LA Press Club’s Best Talk/Public Affairs Program Award.
As a producer in unscripted television, she has worked on shows for all 4 networks, Bravo, A & E, Travel Channel, TLC, The Oprah Winfrey Network, Lifetime Television, BET, MTV, Discovery Health, and others. Her credits include “The Millionaire Matchmaker”, “Bring It”, “Travel Channel Secrets”, “Home Made Simple”, “Medical Fraud Investigators”, “The Little Couple”, “Girls Behaving Badly”, “For Peete’s Sake”, “I Wanna Be A Soap Star”, “Leeza”, “Vibe”, and “New Attitudes”. In 2015 she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle Program as the senior producer for “Homemade Simple” on OWN.
Her passion for talking to all different types of people allows her to delve into current events, civic issues, community engagement, and local politics. Tanya’s goal as a journalist is to provide people with unbiased information about things that are impacting their daily lives, as well as to tell compelling and thought-provoking stories in a way that encourages people to reflect and maybe even look at issues in a new light.
Tanya has been involved in a number of organizations including the Producers Guild of America, Los Angeles Press Club, Television Academy of Arts & Science, Radio & Television News Association of Southern California, Habitat for Humanity Palm Springs, Women in Television & Film, National Association of Black Journalists. She has served as the Vice President of NABJ’s Los Angeles chapter, and on the Board of Directors for the University of Pennsylvania’s Black Alumni Society.
Find her on social media:
Instagram – tanya_mcrae777
Twitter – @TanyaMcRaeSoCal
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/TANYAMCRAETV
About Tanya McRae
Tanya was born on the island of Manhattan and grew up in Amherst and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was always very active in sports including basketball, horseback riding, gymnastics, track, and softball. She received a BA from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania where as a freshman she was the starting center for the Women’s Varsity Basketball team and competed as an award winning member of Penn’s Equestrian Team.
Tanya began her career in television on the assignment desks at ABC “World News Tonight” and “Nightline” in New York. Then she worked at the local WPIX station then onto one of many shows she would produce for Lifetime Television, the talk show “New Attitudes”. After a visit to California, Tanya fell in love with the year round sunshine and accepted a position as the host and producer of the award winning Time Warner Cable community affairs program in Los Angeles, “In Hot Pursuit: South Bay’s Most Wanted”.
Tanya went on to become a field producer and director, and spent the next decade working on docu-series, reality, lifestyle, travel, newsmagazine and talk shows. Some of her favorites were “The World’s Best” on Travel Channel, “Truth” on MTV, the “Leeza” and “Vibe” talk shows, “Girls Behaving Badly” for Oxygen where she produced segments for Chelsea Handler, and “Channel One News” where she worked closely with young reporters like Maria Menounos, Gotham Chopra, Laura Ling, and Errol Barnett – all of whom have made it big since then.
In 2005 Tanya decided to return to her news roots and moved to Palm Springs, CA to work as a reporter and fill-in anchor for the NBC affiliate, KMIR 6. Over the course of three years Tanya received two Emmy Award nominations for her stories, and became the lead reporter on breaking news, human interest stories and an education series. She was often asked to be the Mistress of Ceremonies at local parades, and Emcee conferences for organizations such as Palm Springs Women in Film & Television and the Women’s Leader Forum.
Tanya established Amazonia Productions in 2008 and launched the syndicated lifestyle television show, “Spotlight On The Desert”. She was the Executive Producer and Host, and gave viewers an inside look at the amazing historical locations, resorts, restaurants, art galleries and events in the Palm Springs area. It aired nationally on DIRECTV and locally on Time Warner Cable.
She returned to Los Angeles in 2010 to produce popular shows like “The Millionaire Matchmaker” on Bravo, “Bring It” on Lifetime, and “For Peete’s Sake on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). In 2015 Tanya received a Daytime Emmy Award as Senior Producer for the OWN series “Home Made Simple” in the Outstanding Lifestyle Program category.
In 2018 Tanya returned to her news roots and is currently a Reporter and Multimedia Journalist for Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles. In 2020 she was promoted to Anchor and Host of the network’s public affairs show “In Focus Socal.”