Paula Zahn Profile
A 30-year news veteran, journalist Paula Zahn is executive producer and host of Discovery ID`s On the Case with Paula Zahn. Paula is also the co-host of SundayArts, a weekly television magazine for news covering the arts in New York City. She also hosted the highly acclaimed two hour documentary for PBS called The Retirement Revolution, taking a look at the consequences of mass retirement by Baby Boomers, which premiered in the Spring of 2008.
Before joining Discovery, she spent six years at CNN where she anchored American Morning and Paula Zahn Now. Zahn joined the network in September 2001. On her first day with CNN, Zahn began continuous on-scene coverage of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York. In the course of that reporting, she interviewed rescue workers, survivors, dignitaries and officials, including Jordanian President King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Secretary of State Colin Powell and N.Y. Gov. George Pataki, just to name a few.
Prior to that, she was the anchor of Fox News Channel`s The Edge with Paula Zahn and the Fox Report. She also spent ten years at CBS News, where she co-hosted CBS This Morning and anchored the CBS Evening News Saturday Edition. Her first network job was with ABC News where she served as the co-anchor of World News This Morning and anchored the news cut-ins on Good Morning America. She worked in local TV in Dallas, San Diego, Houston, Boston and Los Angeles before making her jump to network TV.
Zahn has received numerous honors and awards. She has won 9 Emmy awards including a 1994 Emmy for her reporting on mainstreaming the education of the mentally disabled and a 1997 Emmy for her coverage at CBS of the death of Princess Diana, the National Commission of Working Women Broadcasting Award and four Gracie Awards from AWRT including one for her reporting on gender bias in education and another for her tribute to Dana Reeves. Zahn also received an Albert Einstein College of Medicine Spirit Of Achievement Award, the Second Annual Cancer Awareness Award by the Congressional Families Action for Cancer Awareness, a citation from New York`s Beth Israel Medical Center for her contributions to the battle against breast cancer and a Silver Silhouette Award from the National Osteoporosis Foundation for her reporting on Osteoporosis.
Zahn, an experienced cellist who began playing at the age of 5, attended Stephens College on a cello scholarship. While at Stephens, she performed in a trio of cellists that toured the United States. Zahn made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1992 performing with the New York Pops orchestra. She later returned to Carnegie Hall in December 2007 and December 2008 as a soloist with the Sejong Orchestra. She was one of one hundred cellists who performed within an all-cello orchestra in St. Petersburg, Russia for the One Hundredth Cello Congress. Among those that she has had the privilege to play with are Yo-Yo Ma, James Galway, Paul Schaeffer on David Letterman and even Miss Piggy on Sesame Street.
Zahn attended Caius College at Cambridge University, the University of Valencia in Spain and earned a bachelor of art degree from Stephens College in Columbia, Mo.