"Americans need to know who those people are"
Holly Williams is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Istanbul. She joined CBS News in 2012.
Williams has spent much of the past year reporting on ISIS and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria. Williams says she believes it's important to report these stories for an American audience because of their own government's involvement in the conflict, but she's also passionate about telling the stories of the normal people caught up in them.
"There are other people in Iraq and in Syria who are fighting on the ground, who are on the front lines, who are risking their lives and in some cases losing their lives to battle against the extremists," she said. "Americans need to know who those people are, and I hope that they want to know who those people are."
Williams has traveled to the front lines with Kurdish forces -- including many women -- who left their civilian lives and picked up weapons to defend their land.