Lauren Pastrana is the co-anchor of CBS4 News weeknights at 5, 6, 7 and 11 p.m. She joined CBS Miami in April 2012 as a reporter. She is an Emmy-nominated, multimedia journalist with experience in television, radio and web-based news reporting.
Lauren believes everyone has a story to tell and she loves to share them in the community where she grew up. When Lauren first became a member of the CBS4 family, she was also doing double duty as the morning news anchor at Newsradio 610 WIOD.
After many months of very limited sleep, she became a fulltime weekday evening reporter on CBS4. She also served as the anchor of CBS4 News This Morning for five years. While anchoring the morning show, she launched on-air franchises including “Lauren’s List” and “South Florida Survivors,” helped get pets adopted in her weekly “Dogs in the City” segment, and chatted about sports daily during “Talkin’ With Joe.” She has helped lead CBS4’s coverage of historic events including hurricanes, elections, the death of Fidel Castro, the coronavirus pandemic and the social justice protests of 2020.
A Miami native, Lauren returned to South Florida from WINK-TV, the CBS affiliate in Fort Myers, where she was as a reporter and fill-in anchor.
Before her stint in Southwest Florida, Lauren was a reporter and afternoon news anchor at WIOD where she covered everything from Super Bowl XLIV to local political corruption. She also spent a season as an in-stadium reporter for the show “Miami Dolphins Game Day Live.”
Lauren graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Florida, where she was awarded the Four-Year Scholar Award, a distinction bestowed to those who graduate at the top of their class. While in Gainesville, Lauren anchored and reported for WUFT-TV and was part of the team responsible for launching a Spanish-language web-based news service targeting Alachua and the surrounding counties titled AM850: Noticias en Español.
In her free time, Lauren enjoys reading and spending time with her husband, son Jordan, daughter Gianela and their dog Daisy.