CNN Anchor Hala Gorani to deliver commencement address

CNN Anchor Gorani to deliver commencement address

CNN International anchor and Mason alumna Hala Gorani will deliver the commencement address to the Class of 2015 at George Mason University. The ceremony is 10 a.m. May 16 at the Patriot Center on the Fairfax Campus.

Gorani, host of the London-based CNN program “The World Right Now,” earned a bachelor of science degree in economics at Mason in 1992. At Commencement, she will be recognized with an honorary doctor of humane letters degree.

Fluent in English, French and Arabic, Gorani began her journalism career with the French daily La Voix du Nord and the news agency Agence France Presse. She joined CNN in 1998 after anchoring news programs for Bloomberg Television in London.

She was born in Seattle to Syrian and French parents and was raised in Paris.

While at Mason, Gorani wrote editorials and movie reviews and covered events for the campus newspaper Broadside (now IV Estate).

“I would say working at Broadside and writing crystallized my desire to become a journalist,” she told Mason Spirit Magazine in 2008.

Gorani is one of CNN’s most experienced international journalists and has reported from every country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. She was instrumental in CNN International’s coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in 2006, for which CNN won an Edward R. Murrow Award.

Gorani was also one of the CNN journalists awarded a News and Documentary Emmy for the network’s coverage of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that led to the ousting of the country’s then president Hosni Mubarak.