Cheryl McKenzie is a proud Anishinaabe and Cree woman from Hollow Water and Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. Cheryl earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Winnipeg. Her studies in seeking out truth and logical arguments proved to be essential skills when she joined APTN as a reporter in 2001. She went on to play a key role in the launch of APTN National News: Daytime in 2005, where she joined the network’s second live daily newscast as a host and producer.

Shortly after, she moved on to hosting and producing APTN’s current affairs program, Contact, in 2007. APTN InFocus and APTN Investigates benefited from her expertise as host and producer when the news and current affairs team launched these new programs in 2009. She eventually returned to the news desk in 2012 to host APTN National News and quickly made history by being the first Indigenous media outlet to conduct an interview with a sitting prime minister. Cheryl was promoted to executive show producer in 2016.

With hundreds of broadcast hours under her belt, Cheryl has received widespread acclaim and recognition for her work at APTN. She was nominated for a Gemini Award and a Canadian Association of Broadcasters award in 2004 for her work on a series of stories about the impact of asbestos-contaminated insulation in on-reserve housing. In 2022, the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) selected Cheryl as the recipient of the 2022 NAJA-Medill Milestone Achievement Award, which honours exemplary people who have made substantial contributions to the field of journalism.

Throughout her career at APTN, Cheryl has helped train and mentor burgeoning journalists interning for the network’s news department.

She now applies her journalistic expertise to her role as executive director of news and current affairs.