Boriana Milanova Treadwell is an award-winning journalist, educator, and media professional with more than three decades of experience in journalism and higher education. She serves as a Distinguished Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism and Media Management at the University of Miami School of Communication, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in broadcast journalism, television news reporting and producing, multimedia storytelling, and journalism in the age of artificial intelligence. She also serves as faculty adviser for UMTV NewsVision, the University’s award-winning, student-produced television newscast.
Before joining the University of Miami faculty in 2014, Treadwell spent more than 16 years at CNN’s global headquarters in Atlanta, where she held a variety of editorial positions including producer, writer, assignment editor, copy editor, and international newsgathering producer. During her career at CNN, she worked across domestic and international news operations and collaborated with journalists from more than 150 countries, helping coordinate coverage of major global events and producing content for television, digital, and international audiences.
Her work contributed to CNN’s award-winning coverage of some of the most significant news events, including the September 11 terrorist attacks, Hurricane Katrina, the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Arab Spring, the Egyptian revolution, and the conflict in Syria. As part of CNN’s editorial teams, she received numerous industry honors, including Emmy, Peabody, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia, Edward R. Murrow, and Golden Nymph awards.
Prior to her career at CNN, Treadwell worked as a foreign affairs reporter and editor for the Bulgarian daily newspaper Standart, where she covered international politics, post-communist democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and developments in the Middle East. During the 1997 political crisis in Bulgaria, she also contributed reporting to The Times (London) and The European.
Throughout her career, Treadwell has interviewed numerous world leaders, diplomats, policymakers, and public figures, including former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, former Polish Presidents Lech Wałęsa and Aleksander Kwaśniewski, CNN founder Ted Turner, and human rights advocate John Prendergast.
At the University of Miami, Treadwell focuses on preparing students for the rapidly evolving media landscape by integrating traditional reporting skills with multimedia storytelling, digital publishing, data journalism, mobile journalism, verification, audience engagement, and responsible use of artificial intelligence. Her teaching emphasizes ethical reporting, accountability journalism, strong storytelling, newsroom leadership, and practical, hands-on experience that prepares graduates for professional newsrooms.
In addition to teaching, she has developed new journalism curricula, modernized broadcast journalism instruction to reflect today’s multiplatform newsroom, and mentors students pursuing careers in television, digital journalism, and multimedia production.
Born and raised in Bulgaria, Treadwell witnessed the country’s transition from communism to democracy and was active in the student movement during that historic period. She began her journalism career while still in college and has built an international career spanning print, television, and digital journalism.
Treadwell earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Mass Communication from the American University in Bulgaria and a Master of Arts in Communication from Georgia State University. She speaks English, Bulgarian, Russian, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian, and has also studied German and Spanish.