Cheryl McKenzie

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT CHERYL MCKENZIE

Cheryl McKenzie (Anishinaabe/Cree, Peguis First Nation on mom\'s side, Hollow Water First Nation on dad\'s side) is the Executive Director of APTN News & Current Affairs. Cheryl started at APTN as a Reporter/Correspondent in June 2001. She was promoted to Host/Producer in July 2005 for the launch of APTN National News: Daytime. Cheryl then became Host/Producer of Contact in 2007, a live weekly call-in show on APTN. When the network retired Contact in 2009 and launched APTN Investigates and APTN InFocus, Cheryl became a Host/Producer for both of these programs. Then in May 2012 she moved back to APTN National News and brought APTN InFocus along with her as a weekly 20 minute segment in the newscast. In the fall of 2014, InFocus reverted back to a half hour show. It was then expanded to a live, one-hour program with viewer call-ins and social media in 2016 which Cheryl hosted and co-produced. All of this would not have been possible without our dedicated and multi-skilled studio crew and digital news media team. Cheryl left the anchor desk in 2017 after being promoted to Executive Producer. She was selected to mentor for the position of Executive Director and was chosen for this leadership role from a pool of candidates in July 2019. Before entering journalism, Cheryl pursued a career as a Chef and worked in Winnipeg\'s #1 ranked restaurant at the time, Amici & Bombolini, owned and operated by Heinz & Johanna Kattenfeld. She then earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Winnipeg. After a relatively short time working in the field of Indigenous human resource development her career in broadcasting began in the fall of with a \"New Voices\" internship which recruited explicitly for Aboriginal peoples at CBC Radio-Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Once that internship came to an end, Cheryl was hired at APTN by the its inaugural and renowned News Director, Dan David.