Selena Marie Gomez (born July 22, 1992) is an American actress and singer best known for portraying Alex Russo in the Emmy Award-winning Disney Channel television series Wizards of Waverly Place. She subsequently ventured into feature films and has starred in the television movies Another Cinderella Story, Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie, and Princess Protection Program. She made her starring theatrical film debut in Ramona and Beezus.
Her career has expanded into the music industry; Gomez is the lead singer and founder of the pop band Selena Gomez & the Scene, which has released three RIAA Gold certified studio albums, Kiss & Tell, A Year Without Rain, and When the Sun Goes Down, spawned three RIAA Platinum certified singles, "Naturally", "Who Says" and "Love You Like a Love Song" and charted four No. 1 Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs. Gomez has also contributed to the soundtracks of Tinker Bell, Another Cinderella Story, Wizards of Waverly Place, and Shake It Up after signing a record deal with Hollywood Records.
Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric (born January 7, 1957) is an American journalist and author. She serves as special correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials. Starting on September 6, 2012, she will host Katie, a syndicated daytime talk show produced by Disney-ABC Domestic Television. She has anchored the CBS Evening News, reported for 60 Minutes, and hosted Today and reported for Dateline NBC. She was the first solo female anchor of a weekday evening news program on one of the three traditional USA broadcast networks. Couric's first book, The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives was a New York Times best-seller.
As of May 2012, Couric also has a web show for ABC News, entitled Katie's Take, airing weekly on Yahoo.
Couric was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Elinor Tullie (née Hene), a homemaker and part-time writer, and John Martin Couric Jr., a public relations executive and news editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the United Press in Washington, D.C. Her mother was Jewish, but Couric was raised Presbyterian. Couric's maternal grandparents, Bert Hene and Clara L. Froshin, were the children of Jewish immigrants from Germany. In a report for Today, she traced her paternal ancestry back to a French orphan who immigrated to the U.S. in the nineteenth century and became a broker in the cotton business.