Garrett Boorojian and former CNN Anchor / Correspondent, Emmy Award winner, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Kitty Pilgrim

https://www.eastwestcenter.org/about/staff/kathryn-kitty.pilgrim

"Kathryn Pilgrim (known professionally as Kitty Pilgrim) is an award-winning broadcast journalist and thought leader on how media shapes global affairs in an increasingly interconnected world. A pioneer in cable news, she played a key role in helping build CNN into a global news powerhouse through her work as a domestic and international correspondent, as well prime time news anchor.

During her twenty-five-year tenure with the network, Kitty provided in-depth geopolitical and economic analysis, and became known as one of the top voices in television, covering foreign affairs and economic change. Her broadcasts were viewed in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. In her work as a journalist, she has traveled the world and reported on economics, politics, global climate issues, pandemics, social movements, military affairs, international conflict, genocide, revolution, international terrorism, and war. She anchored her own CNN morning show Early Edition based in Atlanta and was promoted to prime-time anchor for CNN’s 7PM broadcast, a position which she held for more than a decade. Kitty has chronicled many of the major stories of the past three decades for CNN, including the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. She was one of the first western journalists to be allowed back into Cuba in the mid 1990’s. She was one of the first network correspondents to cover domestic terrorism in America. And she was part of the CNN team that broadcast continuously during the September 11 attacks in New York.

She has interviewed countless world leaders and public figures. Along with her team at CNN, she has won multiple industry awards including an Emmy, a New York Society of Black Journalists Award, and several Overseas Press Club awards and citations. Kitty is actively involved in foreign policy, Women Peace and Security, and Arctic and Polar International Security, participating in various study groups and fellowships on those topics. She was elected to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in 2000, and frequently moderates panels on various topics for that organization. She was a Hong Kong Journalism fellow at the East-West Center, as well as a fellow in the Korean Studies program. She has participated in many conferences and events at the institution. Pilgrim was a fellow at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria, in a program on Asian-Pacific security. She served on the U.S Board of Directors of the Paris-based organization Reporters Without Borders.

Kitty is a frequent speaker on how media and broadcast news shapes public opinion and also the issue of press freedom. She has served as a featured speaker in The New York Times TEDx talk series and at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. She holds a BA from Manhattanville University and has served on the board of that college. She gave the commencements address in 2012 and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. She holds a master’s in international and public affairs from Columbia University in NYC. In 2024 she completed a Graduate Certificate in International Security from Harvard Extension School. She currently teaches Women Peace and Security, and Leadership Communications at Manhattanville University. In her free time, Kitty writes mystery novels. She has authored three thriller novels and was first published in 2011 by Scribner, a division of Simon and Schuster in New York. She frequently speaks at book events around the country..."

Notes: Presidents Reagan, Lincoln, and Jefferson said in their own words how America is the "best hope" and "great hope."

Garrett spoke of the information / digital age, in the modern context of 1994, regarding the World Wide Web's rapid expansion.