She started her career working as a freelance journalist for the BBC World Service and Voice of America, traveling to Cuba, Syria, Panama and several European countries on assignment for the two organizations.[3]
She was hired by Associated Press Television News as a producer in 1999 and later worked for the news agency's radio division. AP dispatched Garcia-Navarro to Kosovo in 1999; Colombia in 2000; Afghanistan in 2001; Israel in 2002; and Iraq from 2002 to 2004.[7]
Garcia-Navarro traveled to Iraq on assignment before the 2003 war and was among the few journalists that covered the invasion as a unilateral reporter.[8]
Garcia-Navarro joined National Public Radio in November 2004 as Mexico City bureau chief. She moved to Baghdad in January 2008 and oversaw NPR's Iraq coverage for more than a year.[3] In April 2009, she moved to Jerusalem to become bureau chief, a position that she held through to the end of 2012.[9] She opened NPR's Brazil bureau in April 2013.[10]
Garcia-Navarro was awarded the 2006 Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize for her work in Mexico and belonged to teams that received the 2005 Peabody Award and the 2007 Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award recognizing NPR's Iraq coverage.[3]
In February 2011, Garcia-Navarro was one of the first reporters to report from eastern Libya as the uprising was gaining strength and reported for months from rebel-held Benghazi, Tripoli, and the western mountains as rebel forces fought pitched battles against Col. Muammar Gaddafi's regime.[citation needed] Garcia-Navarro's front-line reports made her among the most praised journalists covering the Arab Spring.[according to whom?]
Besides the Murrow and Peabody awards, she received the 2012 City University in London XCity Award,[11] the Outstanding Correspondent Gracie Award,[12] and the Overseas Press Club Lowell Thomas Award.[13]
From her base in Brazil, Garcia-Navarro covered political protests, the Zika virus and the Olympics.[citation needed] She became the new regular host of NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday on January 8, 2017, and later complemented that role by co-hosting the Saturday edition of the network's Up First podcast with Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon.[citation needed]
On September 9, 2021, she announced she would leave NPR as of October 17, 2021.[14] The New York Times Company announced on September 30, 2021, that Garcia-Navarro would join its Opinion Audio team to anchor a new podcast to "explore the personal side of opinion".[15] The podcast, First Person, debuted on June 9, 2022.[16]