Amazing! FSWC Gets Lara Logan to Host & Moderate Spirit of Hope 2018!

Lara Logan's bold, award-winning reporting has earned her a prominent spot among the world's best foreign correspondents. Named a full-time 60 Minutes correspondent in May 2012, the 2016-17 season is her 12th at the newsmagazine.

Logan has received multiple Emmy Awards, several Murrow awards, an Overseas Press Club Award, the Daniel Pearl Award, Glamour Woman of the Year and five American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Awards, to name a few. In 2008 for Outstanding Feature-Hard News for the Iraqi orphans story; in 2004 for Individual Achievement for Best Reporter/Correspondent; in 2003 for Best News Story for her CBS Evening News report on the attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai; in 2002 for Best News Story for her CBS News Radio coverage of the war in Afghanistan; and in 2000 for Best News Story for her CBS News Radio coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She received the David Bloom Award in 2008 from the Radio & Television Correspondents Association for excellence in enterprise reporting and the 2007 Association of International Broadcasters' Best International News Story Award for her report on the Taliban.

Logan was named CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent in February 2006 and Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent in 2008, all while contributing to 60 Minutes beginning in 2005, and 60 Minutes II from 2001. Recent reports for 60 Minutes include the operation to take back Mosul from ISIS, a story on little-known victims of the Holocaust of WWII and another that reported on the similarities between ISIS genocide tactics' and those of Hitler's Final Solution. Her work has taken her from the front lines of the Ebola crisis to the forests of central Africa where she did a story on veterinarians treating endangered mountain gorillas in the wild, to Hollywood where she recently profiled one of rock 'n roll's most prolific photographers. 

She obtained a rare interview with Jack Ma, founder of the giant Chinese Internet company Alibaba, took viewers inside the unique advertising campaign that helped bring an end to Colombia's violent insurgency, and took the audience on an inspiring journey with the story of severely wounded veterans climbing some of the world's tallest peaks.

In February 2011, Logan was almost killed in Tahrir Square in Egypt during the revolution there. She was sexually assaulted and beaten by a mob of some 300 men while reporting a story for 60 Minutes on the Egyptian Revolution. She broke her silence about the brutal attack on 60 Minutes to draw attention to the plight of men and women, as well as female journalists covering war zones. 

Few television reporters have spent as much time in Afghanistan as Logan has since the attacks of 9/11. And in 2010, her 60 Minutes report from the Afghan battlefield, "A Relentless Enemy" earned her electronic journalism's highest award, a duPont - Columbia University Silver Baton. A powerful 2006 report for the CBS Evening News about U.S. Marines under fire in the most dangerous part of Iraq, won an Emmy, an Edward R. Murrow Award and an Overseas Press Club award. "Ramadi: On the Front Line," was a two-segment series, shot in part by Logan herself.

Among her most notable reports for 60 Minutes, her profile of Medal of Honor winner Salvatore Giunta which won the Emmy for Best Interview, a profile on International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde; a report on the controversial practice of raising exotic game on U.S. ranches; a penetrating interview with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; and interviews with Gen John Allen and President Hamid Karzai that highlighted the return of Al Qaeda to Afghanistan long before that was officially acknowledged. Logan has interviewed many commanding generals during the war on terror, to include Gen. John Campbell, when he was running the war in Afghanistan, and Gen. John Abizaid when he was the Commander of United States Central Command.

Logan's reports were an integral part of CBS News' coverage of the war in Iraq, where she lived for almost five years. She was the only staff correspondent from an American network in Baghdad when the U.S. military invaded the city, reporting live from Firdos Square as the statue of Saddam fell. For weeks prior to that Logan shot, produced and reported on her own as Iraqi warplanes pounded the Iraqi capital and appeared on every broadcast at the news network. In June 2007, Logan broke the story of the abuse of special needs Iraqi orphans on the CBS Evening News, a report that made headlines around the world. Also that year, she was one of few journalists who managed to gain permission to report from Darfur in Sudan.

Logan's reporting from the frontlines of Afghanistan with Navy Seals hunting high value targets and another report with Green Berets searching for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden appeared on 60 Minutes II and on the CBS Evening News, The Early Show and CBS News Radio, for which she served as a general assignment reporter. While reporting a 60 Minutes II story about the war near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2005, the military vehicle Logan was riding in hit a double-tank mine. The explosion seriously wounded two soldiers; she escaped with minor injuries.

Before formally joining CBS News in 2002 as "60 Minutes II" correspondent, Logan already had 14 years of journalism experience, including 10 years in the international broadcast news arena. She served as a correspondent for GMTV, the weekday morning news program of Great Britain's ITV (2000-'02), and as a freelance correspondent for CBS NewsRadio, a role that included occasional appearances on the CBS Evening News. Logan reported on the war in Afghanistan, Middle East violence, the Mozambique floods, the land invasions in Zimbabwe and the India earthquake. Previously, she served in a variety of freelance assignments, including as a correspondent for ITN and Fox/SKY, an assignment editor for CBS News and ABC News in London, and an editor/producer for NBC, CBS and the European Broadcast Union (1996-99). Logan also served as a freelance correspondent for CNN (1998-99), covering the U.S. embassy bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania, the conflict in Northern Ireland and the war in Kosovo, among other stories.

She got her start in broadcast journalism in Africa as a senior producer for Reuters Television (1992-96). But Logan began her career in print - as a general news reporter for the Daily News (1990-92) and the Sunday Tribune (1988-89), both located in Durban, South Africa.

Logan was born in Durban and graduated from the University of Natal in 1992 with a degree in commerce. She also holds a diploma in French language, culture and history from the Universite de L'Alliance Francaise in Paris. In addition to French, Logan speaks Afrikaans and basic Portuguese. 

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Mark Your Calendars!

Spirit of Hope will be taking place on May 30, 2018 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre's South Building. 

Stay tuned for additional event details in the coming weeks.

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