Maria Mercader

Mercader started working for CBS News in 1987 as a page in the company's page program,^[1] then began her news career at CBS Newspath, where she produced pieces for distribution at CBS' affiliates.^[2] She also worked on the network's foreign and national news desks, helping to produce breaking news pieces on the death of Princess Diana and the September 11 attacks.^[3] In 2004, Mercader won an Emmy Award for Business and Financial Reporting for helping to produce "The Little Engine That Could, Spam" a CBS News Sunday Morning feature report on computer spam.^[1][3][4]

Mercader was appointed as director of talent strategy in 2016^[5] where she helped improve workplace diversity and coordinated CBS News' participation with the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA), the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, and the National Association of Black Journalists.^[1] She graduated from the AAJA's Executive Leadership Program in Chicago in 2004.^[5]

For over two decades before her death, Mercader had numerous illnesses, including cancer.^[1] In the last week of February 2020, she took medical leave, then died from the COVID-19 pandemic at a New York hospital on March 29, 2020.^[1]