Lester Holt (born March 8, 1959, Marin county, California, U.S.) is an American broadcast journalist who served as anchor (2015– ) of NBC Nightly News; he was the first Black person to solo anchor a weekday network nightly newscast. In February 2025 Holt announced that he would be leaving the anchor chair at the NBC Nightly News in early summer 2025.
Holt, who had an African American father and a mother of Jamaican descent, dropped out of California State University in 1979 to work at a San Francisco radio station. Two years later he launched a 19-year career with CBS, beginning as a reporter for WCBS-TV in New York City. After one year there, he joined Los Angeles-based CBS affiliate TV station KNXT as a reporter and anchor. However, he returned to WCBS-TV in 1983, resuming work as a reporter and adding anchor duties. In 1986 Holt became the evening anchor for WBBM-TV, the CBS station in Chicago, where he remained until he left CBS in 2000 to join MSNBC.
After three years at MSNBC, Holt was hired as a substitute anchor for NBC Nightly News and for the morning show Today. In 2007 he was named full-time weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News, a position he held until 2015. In February of that year, Holt was appointed interim anchor of the weekday NBC Nightly News after permanent anchor Brian Williams was suspended for having made inaccurate statements about his involvement in various events. In June Holt was appointed permanent anchor of the show. Holt also hosted other special shows for NBC and helped cover the sports desk during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. In addition, he served as host of Dateline (2006– ) and coanchor of Weekend Today (2006–15). In 2016 Holt moderated one of the U.S. presidential debates.
Holt made several cameo appearance in films, including The Fugitive (1993) and Primal Fear (1996), and in TV series, such as Early Edition (1997–99), 30 Rock (2007–11), and House of Cards (2015).
Holt’s various honors include the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism (2019).
