Connie Chung to headline women's leadership dinner in Chattanooga

By Staff Report

Sunday, October 6, 2013

photo Connie Chung will speak at the Chattanooga Women's Leadership Institute annual leadership dinner.

ABOUT CWLIThe Chattanooga Women's Leadership Institute helps develop women for positions of business, civic and political leadership. Previous speakers at the organization's annual leadership dinner include Gloria Steinem; FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair; Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell; the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation; Stacey Allison, the first woman to summit Mount Everest; and Dr. Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space.IF YOU GO• What: Impact, the 9th annual Chattanooga Women's Leadership Institute's annual leadership dinner• When: 6:30 p.m. Feb. 27, 2014• Where: Chattanooga Convention Center• Tickets: $65 each; table host sponsorships, which include a table for eight, priority seating and a program listing, are $1,200.• For more info: Call 423-394-8173 or visit www.cwli.org.

Three-time Emmy Award winner Connie Chung will be in Chattanooga to deliver the keynote speech at Impact, the Chattanooga Women's Leadership Institute's annual leadership dinner, in February.

"We invited Ms. Chung to keynote our Impact dinner because she helped pave the way for many women in her industry," Lesley Berryhill, managing director of the institute, said in a news release.

Chung began her career in broadcast journalism in 1969. Since then, she has established herself as a trailblazing female journalist, having worked for all major networks, including NBC in 1983 as an anchor and correspondent for the Saturday edition of "NBC Nightly News," the news release stated. In 1993, Chung became the first woman to co-anchor CBS' national news broadcast, the "CBS Evening News."

She joined ABC News as co-anchor and correspondent on "20/20" in November 1997, and in January 2002, joined CNN to anchor "Connie Chung Tonight." She left on-air duties in March 2003 but returned in 2006 to co-host a weekly program on MSNBC with her husband, Maury Povich, according to the news release.

She has received three Emmy Awards, including two for best interview/interviewer. Chung received the Amnesty International Human Rights Award for her reporting on young women in Bangladesh who were burned with acid as revenge for turning down men's advances, and several awards for an investigative hour on a 1966 civil-rights case. The report resulted in the indictment, trial and conviction of a murderer more than three decades later, the news release stated.

She is also the recipient of a George Foster Peabody Award, honors from American Women in Radio and Television and an Outstanding Young Woman of America Award.

"As a journalist, she persevered in what, at the time, was a very male-dominated field and got the respect she deserved," Berryhill said. "Her professional achievements have inspired multiple generations of women and made her a household name."