Kamahl Santamaria
Kamahl Santamaria is a New Zealand TV journalist. He is currently part of the hosting team of Breakfast on New Zealand's TVNZ 1. Personal life. Kamahl was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. He received his secondary education at Macleans College, where he was in Kupe House. In 1997 he was appointed House Captain. His family was originally from India, from the region of Goa. He is one of two children. Career. TV3 (New Zealand). Kamahl began his journalistic career straight out of high school in 1998, as a news and sports reporter for TV3 in  New Zealand. He also moved up to producing nightly sports bulletins, under the influence of veteran New Zealand journalists Tony Ciprian and Angus Gilles. At the end of his time at TV3 in late 2001, Kamahl was selected to cover the Atlantic Rowing Race. He was on his way to Barbados – where the event was due to finish – when he was grounded at New York's JFK Airport following the American Airlines Flight 587 crash in Queens, New York. In the event, this made him the only reporter from New Zealand or Australia to be able to cover the disaster  on the ground. Kamahl has remained visible in New Zealand media in recent years, with regular radio slots on RadioLive, NewstalkZB, and RNZ, and articles for The Spinoff. In 2019 and 2020, he was a judge for New Zealand's Voyager Media Awards. Sky News (Australia). After three years working on TV3's flagship nightly news show "3 News", Kamahl moved to Australia where he established and ran Sky News Australia's Melbourne business bureau, from the Docklands Broadcast Centre of Channel Seven Melbourne. He was a reporter, presenter and producer on the nightly "Sky Business Report with David Koch . Al Jazeera English (Qatar). In 2004 Kamahl moved to New York and London, and in 2005 was recruited by Al Jazeera English to become a news presenter in Doha, Qatar. Over 16 years, he fronted news and current affairs across the channel – news bulletins, the Newshour", discussion show "Inside Story" – and between September 2009 and November 2016 was the regular host of the weekly business and economics programme "Counting the Cost." He was also the primary presenter of Al Jazeera's interactive newshour "newsgrid" which ran between November 2016 and March 2019. The show was nominated for an International Emmy  Award in October 2018. As a reporter and field anchor, Kamahl also reported for Al Jazeera from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, Dubai, France, the United States, the Philippines, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. He was the electoral "number cruncher" for the U.S. Presidential Elections in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 and in January 2021, went on to anchor Al Jazeera's U.S. presidential inauguration coverage from Washington DC. On 17 March 2022 Kamahl announced on-air that he was leaving Al Jazeera after 16 and a half years. TVNZ (New Zealand). Kamahl returned to New Zealand in March  2022, joining TVNZ to present the network's Breakfast programme from April 2022.