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About Sara James
In 2025, Sara was elected Chair of the Australian-American Fulbright Commission, the flagship foreign exchange scholarship program of the United States. Since 2022, she has served as National Director External Engagement for the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia where she focuses on International trade missions for the organization.
Sara James is an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist and anchor who has reported from across the United States and around the world as a correspondent for NBC News. During her years based at NBC Headquarters in New York City, Sara also was a frequent newsreader on the US Today Show, and guest-anchored on Weekend Today and MSNBC.
Since moving to Australia in 2008, Sara has served as a featured commentator on Australia’s ABC News Breakfast and other ABC News programs and provides detailed analysis of the US political landscape.
​​Sara's distinguished reporting career has earned her many prestigious honors, including a Headliner Award for her report on a victim of the September 11 attacks, the National Press Club award for her investigation of modern-day slavery in Sudan and a New York Festival award for a profile of the first woman considered for the US space program. Sara received an Emmy Award for coverage of the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado and a Gracie for her report about methamphetamine addiction in women. Sara’s chronicling of Australia’s Stolen Generation won the Overseas Press Club of America Citation for Excellence.
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Among her many NBC assignments in the Australasian region, Sara has covered the White Island, New Zealand volcano eruption in 2020, the mass shooting at the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch in 2019, terror attacks in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, the visit of former US Vice President Mike Pence in 2017, the 2012 visit of the Royals to the region, the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch and the 2009 Black Saturday bush fires near her home in Victoria. One of Sara's most memorable assignments was the opportunity to travel to the outback with the late Steve Irwin and wife Terri Irwin in1997. Sara has also enjoyed covering the celebrated Australian Open in Melbourne on several occasions.
Sara's reporting has taken her to the Mideast, Asia, Europe and across Africa. Sara traveled to Saudi Arabia with the North Carolina National Guard in 1990 and was honored to be recognized, "For Outstanding Support To The Soldiers Of The1454th Transportation Company And Their Families During Operation Desert Storm". Sara also reported on the Taliban, the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal, famine in Somalia, political unrest in Haiti, and reveled in a once-in-a-lifetime trek to the bottom of the Atlantic in the French submarine Nautile​ to the wreck of the Titanic.
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Sara is an accomplished public speaker, emcee and moderator who has addressed audiences in the United States and Australia.
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Sara James is the author of An American in Oz (Allen & Unwin), co-author of The Best of Friends (HarperCollins) and editor of An Extraordinary School (ACER Press).
Sara is the Vice President of KCNQ2 Cure Alliance, a co-founder of Genetic Epilepsy Team Australia, and co-creator with husband Andrew Butcher of the annual KCNQ2 New Horizons in Science Dinner in Melbourne dedicated to funding research to find a cure for this deadly neurological disorder.
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AUSTRALIAN STORY: A Place for Us
Introduced by Terri Irwin
Award winning television journalist Sara James was living the dream as an anchor and foreign correspondent for American network NBC.
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She’d lived in New York for fifteen years and reported from around the world including the war zones of Somalia, Sudan and in the Middle East.
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Then she met and married another high flyer, Australian journalist Andrew Butcher, who worked closely with Rupert Murdoch as his corporate affairs manager.​
But with the birth of their second daughter came a curve ball. Baby Jacqui didn’t cry and was having multiple seizures. ‘Your baby has a bad brain’ said the medical specialist. A nurse took Sara aside and said ‘they don’t always know you know. Your baby has bright eyes. Don’t give up.’
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To the amazement of their friends, the Butchers abandoned Manhattan, scooped up their family and moved to the Macedon Ranges outside Melbourne.
There they embraced an entirely new way of life as they started to unlock the mysteries of Jacqui’s distressing and taxing condition.