Brianna Keilar was born in Canberra, Australia, on September 21, 1980. Her family moved to Orange County, California, in 1982. She attended Mission Viejo High School in California, where she was voted homecoming queen. She then enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and began her career as an intern at KTVU-TV in Oakland.

Keilar became a general assignment reporter and radio host at KIMA-TV in Yakima, Washington. She later worked at CBS News in New York for several years before joining CNN as a national correspondent in 2006. As a CNN reporter, she was the first correspondent on the scene of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. She went on to cover Congress and the Obama White House, earning journalism’s Dirksen and Aldo Beckman awards for her reporting.

Keilar became host of CNN Right Now with Brianna Keilar in 2018. She co-anchored New Day alongside John Berman from 2021 until the show ended in 2022. She has co-anchored the afternoon edition of CNN News Central with Boris Sanchez since its April 2023 launch. Keilar also continues to write Home Front, a column drawing on her own experience as an Army spouse.