Michele Steele joined ESPN as a correspondent in Dec. 2011. A versatile journalist based in Chicago, she has covered some of the biggest stories nationally for SportsCenter, Sunday NFL Countdown, NFL Live and ESPN’s digital platforms. Her favorite assignments have included Monday Night Football on SportsCenter, Caitlin Clark’s debut with the Indiana Fever, the Scripps National Spelling Bee and the Warrior Games, featuring athletes from our nation’s armed forces. During the 2024 NFL season, she hosted ESPN Daily, the sports network’s version of ubiquitous New York Times podcast. She also serves as an anchor for SportsCenter.
Prior to ESPN, Steele covered the markets for Bloomberg Television, anchoring a morning business newscast that was broadcast to over 120 affiliates nationwide. She ultimately would become the the network’s first full-time sports reporter, with a focus on the business of the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. Before her time at Bloomberg, she was a correspondent for Forbes, launching the streaming video network, and was a regular contributor to Forbes’ business programming on Fox News Channel.
A native of the Second City, she is president of the Asian American Journalists Association Sports Task Force and a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research professionals group. In 2019, she was recognized by ESPN with a Volunteer of the Year award for her work with Special Olympics and Unified Sports.
Her journalism career began in her hometown for the nationally syndicated business television show First Business, where she ideated, secured funding for and traveled to India for a four-part series on Asia’s third-largest economy. Before that, she was a public school teacher in France and speaks fluent French.
She earned a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She credits her dad for her sense of humor and for, above all, teaching her the importance of rooting for the underdog.