Valerie Coleman Morris

Emmy award winning journalist, Valerie Morris is the former Business Anchor for CNN domestic and international. She provided these services for CNN for the last eleven years.  In March of 2007, Morris made the conscious decision to focus exclusively on financial literacy as an aspect of business and social economics. Her core interest and passion is financial literacy for women and people of color, two of the most disenfranchised segments of the population concerning money issues.

Morris continues to write and narrate the nationally syndicated radio column which she created in 1986 called "With the Family in Mind" - that focuses on family and sandwich generation issues and their money implications.  These segments air on CBS Network Radio three times a week.

This October (2007), Valerie has been asked to give a three session lecture series on multi-generation financial literacy at the University of California Berkeley's Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.  Her money literacy message presents attainable money management skills for students of all ages but she has a special desire to speak to and convince college students about getting a financial life before debt becomes a way of life.

A popular lecturer on financial literacy, Morris also works as a facilitator, keynote speaker and Mistress of Ceremonies for senior executive conferences and corporate staff and employee special events.

Morris' broadcast career spans more than 35 years and includes both coasts.  She came to CNN in 1996 from WPIX-TV in New York where she was both a general assignment reporter and weekend anchor. She began her career as a broadcast journalist in San Francisco where she worked for KRON-TV and KGO-TV as a researcher, general assignment reporter and ultimately an anchor. Morris was also the morning drive anchor at KCBS Radio in San Francisco and midday anchor at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles.

She has received a roster of awards including three California Emmy awards for both breaking news events and special reports. She was a major contributor to KCBS-Radio's Peabody Award team coverage as co-anchor in the days immediately following the 1989 California earthquake in which a portion of the San Francisco Bay Bridge collapsed.

Morris has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from San Jose State University in California and a Masters in Broadcast Journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York where she was the recipient of a New York Times fellowship.

Valerie, a product of an Air Force family, was raised in England, France, Scotland and Japan.  She has two adult daughters, is the very proud grandmother of two "grand littles" and lives in Tucson, Arizona with her husband, Robert L. Morris, Jr., an emerging markets strategist and subject matter expert for LIMRA.