Building Bridges Luncheon

His work has been richly rewarded, with thirteen Emmy Awards, 11 Edward R. Murrow awards, the DuPont-Columbia award, the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the industry’s highest honor: the George Foster Peabody Award, which he received for his tireless coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. His televised reports from New Orleans were praised by Vanity Fair as “Murrow-worthy.”

During the decade he spent as Anchor and Managing Editor of NBC Nightly News, it was the most-watched news broadcast in the United States — and Williams was viewed by more people on a daily basis than any other broadcaster. At the time of his retirement from NBC News, he was anchor and co-creator of the critically-acclaimed “Eleventh Hour with Brian Williams,” which chronicled the 2016 election and its aftermath, including the January 6th insurrection and the failed attempt to overturn a Presidential election. Stemming from his years of aggressive reporting on Putin and Russia, he took great pride when in May of 2023 his name appeared on a Kremlin-generated list of 500 Americans permanently banned from entering Russia.

Williams joined NBC in 1993 after a dozen years in local news. Two years later, he was named Chief White House Correspondent. In 2007, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, he became a favorite of late-night talk show audiences, and in 2008 he became the first evening news anchor to host “Saturday Night Live.” In 2014, Williams was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame by fellow member Bruce Springsteen.

Beyond his family, his first love has always been firefighting — and that remains true today. He applied for enrollment in the fire academy at the age of 18, and has served as a volunteer firefighter for many years. He is currently an active-duty member of the fire service in Ocean County, New Jersey, where he serves as a Lieutenant. He has been a member of the Leary Firefighters Foundation Board of Directors for 12 years, where he is proud to advocate for the needs of the nation’s 130,000 volunteer firefighters.

She holds an M.A. in the History of Religions from the University of Chicago Divinity School, and a B.A with concentrations in English Literature and Anthropology from Sarah Lawrence College, where she delivered the commencement address to the class of 2007.

At present, Young is an advisor to the Norwegian government on its National July 22nd Memorial process and a member of the advisory board for Sweden's new National Holocaust Museum in Stockholm.

Ciarán has performed in four television specials for PBS: The Irish...And How They Got That Way, From Galway to Broadway, Ciarán an Evening With Friends, and most recently The Four Phantoms In Concert.