Ray Suarez joined The NewsHour in October 1999 as a Washington-based Senior Correspondent.

Suarez has thirty years of varied experience in the news business. He came to The NewsHour from National Public Radio where he had been host of the nationwide, call-in news program "Talk of the Nation" since 1993. Prior to that, he spent seven years covering local, national, and international stories for the NBC-owned station, WMAQ-TV in Chicago.

In Autumn 2006 Rayo/HarperCollins published his examination of the tightening relationship between religion and politics in America, The Holy Vote. Suarez wrote the book "The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration (Free Press)," and has contributed to several others, including "Brooklyn: A State of Mind (Workman, 2001)," "Local Heroes (Norton, 2000)," "Saving America's Treasures (National Geographic, 2000)," "Las Christmas (Knopf, 1998)," and "About Men ( Poseidon, 1986)." His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and many other publications.

Suarez was also a Los Angeles correspondent for CNN, a producer for the ABC Radio Network in New York, a reporter for CBS Radio in Rome, and a reporter for various American and British news services in London. Over the years he has narrated, anchored or reported many documentaries for public radio and television including a weekly series, Follow the Money (1997, PBS), and programs including Yesterday (2006, WETA) Who Speaks for Islam? (LinkTV, 2005) By The People (PBS, 2004-05), The Journey Home (2004, WETA) The Execution Tapes (2001, Public Radio) Through Our Own Eyes (2000, KQED).

During 2004 he was an essayist for BBC Radio, joining a group of U.S.-based writers on a new program called "State of the Union." The weekly commentaries were the successors to the late Alistair Cooke's "Letter From America." He currently hosts the monthly public radio foreign affairs series "America Abroad" for PRI, and is the narrator for American RadioWorks, the documentary unit of American Public Media.

Suarez shared in NPR's 1993-94 and 1994-95 duPont-Columbia Silver Baton Awards for on-site coverage of the first all-race elections in South Africa and the first 100 days of the 104th Congress, respectively. He has been honored with the 1996 Ruben Salazar Award from the National Council of La Raza, Current History's 1995 Global Awareness Award, and the 2005 Distinguished Policy Leadership Award from UCLA's School of Public Policy.

Suarez holds a B.A. in African History from New York University and an M.A. in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by many colleges and universities, most recently by Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. He is a winner of the Benton Fellowship in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Chicago. He has also been honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award from NYU, and a Professional Achievement Award from the University of Chicago.

A life member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Suarez was a founding member of the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.