It's been a busy year for Lester Holt. The veteran journalist steers the helm at NBC Nightly News and moderated one of the recent presidential debates.
And he seems to constantly travel the world, leading coverage of some of the most important stories of our time.
Just one day after the ambush-style shooting that left five police officers dead in Dallas, Holt arrived to a sad and broken North Texas still reeling and in disbelief.
Holt injected his own brand of sincere compassion, as he worked to explain to his audience the violence that interrupted a Texas summer and put Dallas in the international spotlight.
"You get the feeling that no place is immune to this. That was a peaceful march and there was no reason for anything like that to happen or expect something like that to happen," Holt said.
"You feel the pain of that community because they take it very personally," he added. "It's not something happening around the world or in another city, it's your town."
Since taking over the anchor desk for NBC Nightly News in June 2015 Holt has been a frequent flyer, covering major news stories such as terrorist attacks and events like the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
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More recently, he endured wind and rain to describe the ravages of Hurricane Matthew.
"It's been a really tough year. But it's part of the signature of this broadcast. If we get big stories, we go. We bring a big team with us and our intention is to really own the story," Holt said.
Holt, the first African-American solo anchor of a weekday network nightly newscast, transitioned into his role at a time when racially charged incidents are too frequent in national headlines.
"First of all it reminds you of our uneven history in terms of progress. You know, we think we move past things, and we haven't. And hopefully it's, over time, it's an upward trend. But I look at stories of race like I do any story," Holt said.
"I'm always the first person to step back from the emotions, step back from knee-jerk conclusions and perceptions and really try to ask the deeper questions, and sometimes it's hard when you're covering these stories, when they're filled with emotions to really stop and stand back for a minute," he said.
As a witness to world events, Holt wants to give viewers a sense of what he sees.
"Like when I go to Hungary and see people and migrants from Syria trying to find a better life, the connections are obvious. You realize you know we're not much different. There you are with your family and all your worldly belongings and you think, 'What if that was me? Would I actually take my children and put them on a rickety boat and sail in hopes of a better life?'" he said. "You think, 'Yeah, I probably would.'"
And for someone who sometimes says he fell into the job, he's having a great run.
"I was happily doing Dateline, Weekend Today and Weekend Nightly, and also being a reporter on big breaking stories, and I was quite happy," Holt said.
"So I was really in this whole mindset of, 'OK, it's time to start pumping the brakes on this. I've been on weekends for a dozen years, and then everything changed. So here I am," he said.
One of Holt's predecessors on the NBC Nightly News, Tom Brokaw, advised him to be proactive, jump on breaking news and energize the broadcast.
It looks like he's done that: This year NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt won a coveted Edward R. Murrow Award, and the National Association of Black Journalists named Holt its Journalist of the Year.
