Evening news anchor Maya Trabulsi ’95 isn’t skipping stops along the way

When Maya Trabulsi ’95 moved from London to St. Louis, Missouri, halfway through her bachelor’s degree, she took a leap of faith—one she would repeat not long after, relocating to San Diego to pursue a graduate degree in television, film and new media. Through bold moves and years of hard work as she learned the ropes of broadcast media, Maya has proven herself time and again—earning awards and recognition as a feature journalist, and San Diego evening news anchor.

While Maya Trabulsi’s childhood stretched across countries and continents, one thing was true regardless of where “home” was: The news was always on TV. Maya was born in Beirut during Lebanon’s civil war, and spent much of her early childhood in Dubai, attending the Jumeirah American School. When she was about to enter Grade 4, Maya and her family moved to London, where she started at—and eventually graduated from—ASL.
 
“We were never shielded from even a speck of reality,” Maya says of her home life growing up. “Coming from a turbulent part of the world, with so much happening, it was just something that was important to stay in touch with. I realized how important that kind of information was.”
 
She “belongs” in Lebanon, the UK and the US, yet, “I never really came from anywhere,” Maya says. “I was always an outsider, and the way that media reported in these three continents was very interesting to me. I realized just how differently stories were told depending on who they were told by, who they were told about, and where they were told.” 

After ASL, Maya spent her first two years as an undergraduate at Regent’s University London, where she discovered a deep interest in media communications. After two years at Regent’s, looking for a change of pace (and something more in keeping with her many years of American education), she transferred to Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. 
 
“When I first moved to the United States, I would spend hours in the grocery store, just trying to understand the different brands that everyone else had grown up with. I didn’t have a car, and would trudge through the snow with my groceries, weighing them out at the store to make sure I could actually walk them back to my dorm,” Maya recalls.
 
Although arduous and a little bit isolating at the time, Maya now views those early St. Louis experiences in a more positive light—but she radiates positivity, and for Maya, every bump in the road has been one she has learned and grown from.
 
After graduating, Maya took yet another big leap west; she embarked on a graduate degree in San Diego, a city where she knew no one, and still didn’t know how to drive. “I was really just starting from scratch in my twenties by myself,” Maya says more than once. “And while it was very difficult, it was exactly what I needed to begin my path toward where I am right now.”
 
Today, Maya is a feature journalist and the KPBS San Diego Evening Edition anchor, a post she has held since 2019. (Prior to that, she spent five years filling in for the previous anchor as needed, while working as KPBS’s Weekend Edition anchor, as well as feature reporting for TV, radio and web.)
 
In the years since she took a leap of faith and started graduate school at San Diego State University, San Diego has completely become her city. “Oh, this is my town now,” Maya laughs. “I can’t imagine leaving it. San Diego is known as ‘America’s Finest City,’ and I can attest to how it has taken me in, as a child of the world, and allowed me to find roots.”
 
She has several San Diego Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists honors, Golden Mike awards, and two Emmy awards to her name. To date, though, the award of which she is proudest is the Ann Cottrell Free Animal Reporting Award from the National Press Club in Washington, DC. She won it thanks to an investigation into an unethical dog-breeding operation happening on both sides of the US–Mexico border. She found the story through an Instagram Reel. 

“I find a lot of stories just by doing what I do, day-to-day,” says Maya. On this particular day, Maya was scrolling Instagram when she came across an alarming video from The Animal Pad, a San Diego animal rescue that had recently taken in doodles en masse. 
 
“You start tracing back the steps,” Maya says. “How did we get to this place where this Reel is being viewed by hundreds of people—maybe thousands—of these dogs being rescued. What’s the beginning of this story? Let’s tell it, and see what we can understand about why this happened.”
 
The story that resulted is an alarming and important one. With the help of The Animal Pad, and the San Diego Humane Society, Maya told San Diegans the story of an abusive dog-breeding operation, and zoomed out to give a sense of grim perspective about the industry at large—using one shocking local case study to illustrate the nationwide failings of regulatory bodies to address widespread abuse and malpractice by animal breeders.
 
“I think the first animal welfare story I did was about the myth of micro pigs,” Maya remembers. “Pigs were being sold as ‘mini pigs’ or ‘tea cup pigs,’ worth thousands of dollars in some cases, when essentially they’re just regular, pot-bellied pigs that are underfed. I am an animal lover, and this was something I was incredibly curious about.”
 
One thing led to another, and Maya’s “beat” organically became that of animal welfare issues. “After you do one investigation, another one comes along, and then another one, and now you have more industry knowledge you can apply to your next story. I’ve done stories about rattlesnakes; bees; foxes being trained as search-and-rescue tools; a two-part investigation about beagles being used in drug trials, and why it’s still being done. And then there was the dog breeder story.
 
Not everyone in Maya’s position would continue feature reporting once they have taken up a full-time anchor spot. But for Maya, storytelling, especially when it involves exposing underreported animal cruelty cases, or telling exciting stories about the human spirit that “other people ignore,” is at the heart of her love for her work.
 
Maya has long been keenly focused on the powers and possibilities of documentary film- and television-making. While still in graduate school, Maya was simultaneously producing documentaries of her own for her coursework, and working her first-ever television job—an internship that turned into a full-time job—at Channel 4 San Diego.
 
“I started there at the lowest rung on the ladder. I was recycling tapes, holding reflection filters, doing office work, and digitizing video,” Maya remembers. “I think the most important thing that anyone can do as an intern is to display a strong work ethic. That’s what I did. I made $9 an hour to start, and I worked my way up and became a video editor.”
 
She got a full-time position at Channel 4 when she graduated, and remained a video editor there for six years. “While I was really good at video editing, I did not enjoy it,” Maya admits. “But it was the most important part of my career, working as a video editor for those many years, despite the fact that I didn’t enjoy it.”
 
In editing thousands of hours of footage and spinning it into a narrative arc that worked, Maya “became very, very good at understanding how a story is structured.” Supporting some of the best local reporters in the city and learning from them largely by working with their scripts, she was exposed to a wide variety of writing, shooting and pacing styles; “understanding how the eye and the ear of a viewer and listener are poised to be cued for new information.” Maya has brought those invaluable lessons along with her throughout her career—and credits them for helping her become a strong storyteller.
 
“The advice I give to people is, ‘do not skip steps along the way,’” Maya says. “All of these points in your life, whether or not you enjoy them, are important in forming the kind of journalist you’re going to be.”

Maya first got on camera in Riverside County, about 100 miles northeast of San Diego, initially as the morning news anchor before being quickly promoted to the more “serious” evening news program, but only spent a short time there. When she eventually saw a job open up in the KPBS San Diego newsroom, she jumped at the opportunity—even though she was no longer going to be on camera.
 
“I came in as a radio news anchor, which I had never done before,” Maya says of her early years at KPBS. “Radio was not something I was leaning toward, but it is something I am grateful I was able to participate in, and to learn from, especially from a public media stance. It was great.”
 
After nearly five years, the permanent evening edition anchor spot opened, and Maya took it. Only five months after that, COVID took hold. “We had to completely change the way we have ever done things in the industry, and what we did was remarkable. We did not miss a single newscast during the pandemic, even when we were all working relatively remotely.” She beams with pride, all these years later, recalling how her station came together to make this possible.
 
Maya’s station engineers created a set in her home, and brought in a camera, teleprompter, computers and a live-shot box. “Every evening during the pandemic, I was broadcasting from my home, and no one would have known the difference. It was essentially a live shot every night, and I had my producer on FaceTime, and she had the control room on her other phone. The director was also back at the station, separated from the control room by plexiglass, and it was almost always smooth.”
 
In fact, Maya and her colleagues continued to shoot this way for nearly three years, well after the rest of the world had more or less returned to pre-pandemic work life. KPBS has seized the pandemic as an opportunity to remodel their building, which meant that Maya’s set wasn’t ready again until October of 2023. “It felt great to be among my colleagues again, in a brand new studio, and to have a more dynamic newscast.”
 
It's been more than 20 years, and innumerable awards and recognitions, since Maya first got in front of the camera to report in Southern California—and it’s work that she remains passionate about day in and day out.
 
“I think that what is important to me, and where I feel like I can add the most value besides in my work as a journalist,” Maya says, “is how I can inspire people from other countries; other cultures; minorities; people who don’t speak English as a first language—I didn’t speak English as a first language—to learn from the best, and watch, listen, study and simulate, if they have to. To volunteer, if they have to. To find a way to demonstrate a strong work ethic. And also, to just do it. When you do something long enough, and you practice it, you get really good at it.”
 
The television and film industry, as Maya will be the first to admit, is challenging and competitive. But, she urges, “If it is something you want to do—to tell the stories of the world around us—it is not a moonshot. It is not out of reach. But you do have to accept it both as a privilege, and as a burden of responsibility.