Born in Ferriday, LA (that's about four hours north of Nawleans, y'all) with the lilting name Alma Dale Campbell, Brown grew up the daughter of a State Senator and his artist wife. She attended Louisiana State University and Regis University. She's now Jewish, despite having been raised Roman Catholic, and is married to a nice Jewish boy, Damiel Samuel Senor, former spokesperson for the Coalition forces in Iraq. They have two sons.

Brown began her career at the Topeka, Kansas NBC affiliate, and eventually worked her way up to the big time, joining the New York office in 1996. After spending a decade at NBC News and eventually becoming the primary substitute anchor for the gravitas machine known as Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News, Campbell bolted NBC for CNN in 2007.

At CNN she got her own show, semi-shockingly titled Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull. Despite this promise to her viewers, during the 2008 election the McCain/Palin campaign wasted no time accusing her of bias and "going over the line" in bringing up Palin's pregnant daughter. Angering Sarah Palin usually means you're doing something right, but in 2010, Brown announced she would be leaving her post at CNN. Citing low ratings and stiff competition from Nancy Grace, Keith Olbermann, and Bill O'Reilly who all also occupy the same 8 pm time slot, Brown said she had no desire to "shed her own journalistic skin to try to inhabit the kind of persona that might co-exist in that line-up." Zing.

[Image via Getty]