Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour is one of today's leading news correspondents and currently the anchor of ABC News' "This Week" program. She was formerly chief international correspondent at CNN, where she worked for 27 years. She is a Board Member at the IWMF (International Women's Media Foundation).

Christiane Amanpour

Amanpour was born on January 12, 1958 in London, England. She is the daughter an Iranian father Mohammad, an airline executive, and British mother, Patricia. Christian completed her primary education in Iran, and at the age of 11 sent by her parents to a boarding school in England. She returned to Iran after finishing her high school but soon went back to England after the Islamic Revolution in Iran and following Iraq's invasion of Iran. She has stressed that her family was not forced by the government to leave Iran.

Later Christiane moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island. During her college years, she worked at WBRU-FM radio station, and also for NBC TV affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1983, Amanpour graduated from the university summa cum laude with a bachelor of journalism degree.

Amanpour joined CNN in 1983 as an entry-level assistant on the network’s international assignment desk in Atlanta. She arrived at CNN with a suitcase, her bicycle, and about 100 dollars. She worked her way up to correspondent in CNN’s New York bureau before becoming an international correspondent in 1990. Her first major assignment was the Gulf War, and she has since covered wars, famine, genocide and natural disasters around the globe. In 1989, she was assigned to work in Frankfurt, Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. Through this position, she was able to move up throughout the company and by 1990 served as a correspondent for CNN's New York bureau. Following Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Amanpour's reports of the Persian Gulf War brought her wide notice while also taking the network to a new level of news coverage. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones.

Amanpour (right) interviewing Hashemi Rafsanjani

From 1992 to 2010, Amanpour was CNN's chief international correspondent. She was also the anchor of Amanpour, a daily CNN interview program (2009–2010). In her 18 years as an international correspondent, Amanpour has reported on all the major crises from the world’s many hotspots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans and the United States during Hurricane Katrina. She has also secured exclusive interviews with world leaders from the Middle East to Europe to Africa and beyond, including Iranian Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan and Syria and Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat among others. After 9/11 she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

On March 18, 2010, Amanpour announced she would leave CNN for ABC News, where she would anchor "This Week." She said, “I’m thrilled to be joining the incredible team at ABC News. She hosted her first broadcast on August 1, 2010. During her first two months as host, the ratings for This Week reached their lowest point since 2003. On February 28, 2011, she interviewed Muammar Gaddafi and his sons Saif al-Islam and Al-Saadi al-Gaddafi.

Her body of work has earned an inaugural Television Academy Honor, nine News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow award and other major journalism awards as well as honorary degrees from The American University of Paris, Georgetown University, New York University, Smith College, Emory University and the University of Michigan.

In 2007, Amanpour was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for her “highly distinguished, innovative contribution” to the field of journalism. In 1998, the City of Sarajevo named her an honorary citizen for her “personal contribution to spreading the truth” during the Bosnia war from 1992 to 1995.

Amanpour is married to James Rubin, a former Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Clinton administration and currently an informal adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Their son, Darius John Rubin (in picture), was born in 2000. The family resides in New York City.