CNN held a celebration of honor of Fareed Zakaria last night to mark his 10 years at CNN, as the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS.
Jeff Zucker kicked off the evening with a toast to Zakaria, and to congratulate him on recently receiving the Centennial Award from the Foreign Press Association. Zakaria thanked Zucker for his support for the show, thanked his tremendous show team, executive produced by Tom Goldstone; HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler who encouraged him to pitch the show to CNN 10 years ago, and also Liza McGuirk, Fareed’s first executive producer of the weekly program who continues to executive produce the Fareed Zakaria GPS prime time specials.
Zakaria’s first guest on GPS was then British Prime Minister Tony Blair – since then he’s interviewed French President Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, then-Premier Wen Jiabao, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, both Clintons, former President Jimmy Carter, and also Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Amal Clooney, Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates, David Petraeus, and more.
Partygoers included Zakaria’s longtime friend Dr. Henry Kissinger, who had an on-stage discussion with the man of the night. Also in attendance was Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein, and a number of CNN staffers:
- John Berman
- Max Boot
- Simon Bouvier
- Alisyn Camerota
- Rana Foroohar
- Tom Goldstone
- Jessica Gutteridge
- Matt Kendrick
- Don Lemon
- Dan Logan
- Liza McGuirk
- Tim Naftali
- Nida Najar
- Caroline Richenberg
- Jim Sciutto
- Dana Sherne
- Anne-Marie Slaughter
- Brian Stelter
- Jeffrey Toobin
- Fareed Zakaria
- Jeff Zucker
Photo: Donald Bowers for CNN