Becky Sullivan

Becky Sullivan is NPR’s sports correspondent. She covers professional leagues, college athletics and youth sports, with stories about the people who play them and the intersections of sports with science, business and the law.

She has reported and produced for NPR since 2011. Before becoming the network’s sports correspondent, she traveled widely around the U.S. and the world to cover conflict, natural disasters, disease, politics and protests.

In 2020, she flew to Tehran to help cover the assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, work that helped make NPR a Pulitzer finalist that year. Her work covering the killing of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police in 2020 won an Edward R. Murrow Award for Hard News.

She has traveled repeatedly to Israel and the Palestinian territories to cover the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and she was part of NPR’s team on the ground in Ukraine after Russia invaded in 2022. Sullivan has spoken to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan on the anniversary of Sept. 11, reported from a military parade in Pyongyang for coverage of the regime of Kim Jong-Un, visited hospitals and pregnancy clinics in Colombia to cover the outbreak of Zika and traveled around Haiti to report on the aftermath of natural disasters.

Born and raised in Kansas City and a graduate of the University of Kansas, Sullivan has often brought coverage of the Midwest and Great Plains region to NPR. In the summer of 2023, she rode her bicycle more than 4,000 miles from Washington, D.C., to the Oregon coast.