Earlier this week, Ann Curry was named the new co-anchor of the ‘Today’ Show along side Matt Lauer. Five years ago, she was passed over for the position when Meredith Vieira came in. With Vieira leaving, Curry fills the role. Ann Curry likens getting the new role to the computer nerd getting asked to the prom by the quarterback of the football team.

Curry has served as ‘Today’s’ news anchor for more than 14 years, since March 1997. She has also been the anchor of “Dateline NBC” since May 2005, and she regularly substitute anchors for “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.” Curry has covered the major news stories of the past decade-and-a-half including three presidential elections, the September 11 attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Hurricane Katrina. She recently spent a week in Japan covering the destruction from the massive earthquake and tsunami. And just last week, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, she traveled to Pakistan to report live on the developing situation on the ground in that country.

Ann Curry has distinguished herself in global humanitarian reporting, frequently traveling to remote areas of the world to cover under-reported stories. She has travelled to Sudan five times since 2006 to report on the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad. Curry has conducted numerous exclusive interviews with world leaders and dignitaries including three sit-downs with Dalai Lama, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s first-ever interview with an American news organization, and an interview with former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, just two months before her assassination in December 2007. Curry has traveled the world reporting from war-torn areas, and she was the first network news anchor to report on the refugee crisis caused by the genocide in Kosovo in 1999. As part of ‘Today’s’ unprecedented Ends of the Earth series, Curry spent ten days in Antarctica and the South Pole in November 2007, and she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in November 2008 to shed light on the global effects of climate change.

Ann Curry is slated to begin her new role in June. Here’s some of our favorite news pieces from her: Ann Curry discovers her Japanese roots and Ann Curry does comedy.

Ann Curry talks to Access Hollywood about her new role

Today Show announcement Ann Curry (see 3:20 mark)