Rachel Phillips, weekend sports anchor / reporter

ABC-7 reporter Rachel Phillips was born and raised in Brisbane, Australia and has been in the U.S. since August of 2019.

Rachel graduated high school unsure of what career she wanted to pursue and enrolled in a dual degree of Business and Creative Industries, majoring in film and television production at the Queensland University of Technology. Fairly quickly Rachel changed her degree to be solely film focused. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts Film Television and New Media Production from QUT in 2018.

In the summer of 2017 Rachel had the opportunity to travel to East Lansing and complete a film course at Michigan State University. It was here that the idea of a career in journalism really took off. Upon returning to Australia, she did everything she could to ensure that journalism became a career. She spent the remainder of her undergraduate degree interning for Channel Nine News Queensland. Rachel started in the news promotions department but her passion was always sports. Within months Rachel was a part of the sports team, covering all of the biggest sports and players in Brisbane, alongside some of the best sports television personalities.

Rachel knew she needed to further her education in order to peruse journalism properly. Her professor at MSU suggested the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, so she took the plunge and moved from Brisbane to Phoenix to do her Master’s in Sports Journalism.

She covered the Arizona Cardinals, NASCAR, ASU Baseball, Gymnastics, Aquatics, Tennis, health-related areas within sports and the 2020 election. Rachel anchored Cronkite Sports Now, two special edition Fox Sports Arizona shows and Cronkite News 2 Go. She was also a tennis analyst on the Pac-12 Plus streams.

While Rachel’s ideal career is in Sports Journalism, she loves being able to tell people’s stories and is eager to do exactly that here in the Borderland.

In her spare time Rachel enjoys travelling (she has been to every continent except Antarctica) road tripping, camping, playing cards, watching and playing sport and catching up with her friends and family. You will be hard pressed to find Rachel without a Diet Coke in hand and in the middle of rugby season it is almost guaranteed that she will be awake at 2am watching her favorite team, the Melbourne Storm play.

Rachel is new to El Paso so feel free to reach out with some good restaurant recommendations, any story ideas or just to say hey!