Ted Koppel with Amna Nawaz

November 22, 2025

The Richmond Forum opened its 40th season with a standing ovation for the return of Ted Koppel, who inaugurated The Forum’s first season in 1987. Stepping into the lights, he waved off the applause with trademark dry humor and immediately set the tone for an evening that was equal parts history lesson, master class, and homecoming.

It was a full-circle moment not just for The Forum, but for the duo seated at center stage. Moderating the conversation was “PBS NewsHour” co-anchor Amna Nawaz, who began her journalism career as a “Nightline” intern working for Koppel. A month into the job, the September 11 attacks changed the world. “I got to watch the very best journalists in the business do what they do best,” Nawaz said. “I am a journalist today because of that day.”

For over five decades, Ted Koppel has been a defining voice in broadcast journalism, bearing witness to many of the most pivotal events in modern history.

Best known as the anchor and managing editor of ABC’s “Nightline”, Koppel led the program from its launch in 1980 until 2005. Over more than 6,000 broadcasts, he covered landmark stories across the globe. On the final day of the Soviet Union, Koppel was the only journalist reporting from inside the Kremlin with Mikhail Gorbachev. He also conducted the first U.S. television interview with Nelson Mandela at his home in Soweto, South Africa, following his release after 27 years in prison.

Before “Nightline”, Koppel was a correspondent and bureau chief for ABC News. When he was hired in 1963, he was the youngest network correspondent working in the country. He notably reported on the civil rights movement in Selma, Alabama, and covered presidential campaigns from 1964 onward. He also reported on the conflicts in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, President Nixon’s historic 1972 trip to China, and Henry Kissinger’s Middle East shuttle diplomacy.

By the time he stepped down from “Nightline”, Koppel was the most decorated journalist in ABC News history. His honors include 43 Emmy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Emmy), eight Peabody Awards, 12 duPont-Columbia Awards, and nine Overseas Press Club Awards — more than any contemporary. He was selected as a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Republic of France and has received 22 honorary doctorates. In 2012, he was named one of the “100 Outstanding Journalists in the United States in the Last 100 Years” by NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

In 2015, he authored “Lights Out”, a New York Times bestseller that explored the threat of a major cyberattack on America’s power grid. Koppel continues to contribute insightful reporting as a senior contributor — and the nation’s oldest working network correspondent — at “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

Amna Nawaz is co-anchor of “PBS NewsHour” and an Emmy- and Peabody-winning journalist.

Before joining “NewsHour” in 2018, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, where she led livestream coverage of the 2016 presidential election. She previously served as a foreign correspondent and Islamabad bureau chief at NBC News, where she was the first foreign journalist to report from North Waziristan—then a Taliban stronghold—while pregnant with her first child. She also founded NBC’s Asian America platform in 2014 to elevate stories from the country’s fastest-growing demographic.

At PBS, Nawaz has reported from the White House, across the U.S., and around the world on issues including immigration, foreign policy, gun violence, education, climate, and culture. She has covered the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Uvalde school shooting, U.S. presidential elections and inaugurations, the war in Afghanistan, and Hurricane Katrina.

Nawaz has interviewed numerous global leaders and newsmakers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, Ava DuVernay, and Sue Bird. She co-hosts “Beyond the Canvas”, PBS’s primetime arts series, and has produced award-winning documentaries including “Raising the Future” and “Life After Lockup”.

She is a four-time Peabody Award recipient for “PBS NewsHour” coverage, including from Israel (2024), Uvalde (2023), and Capitol Hill (2021), and on global plastic pollution (2019). She has also hosted podcasts such as “Broken Justice” and “The Longest Year”.

The first Muslim American and first Asian American to moderate a U.S. presidential debate, Nawaz is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and several journalism associations. She earned degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics. A first-generation American born to Pakistani parents, she grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and continues to live in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband and two daughters.