Brian Williams

About Brian Williams

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is the seventh anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the flagship evening news program of the NBC television network. Williams replaced Tom Brokaw on December 2, 2004. Previously, Williams was the network's chief White House correspondent and host of The News with Brian Williams on CNBC and MSNBC. In 2007, Williams was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut, with his wife, Jane Stoddard Williams, one of their two children and two dogs.

The son of a business executive, Williams was raised in a middle class Irish Catholic home. In his childhood his family moved from his birth place, Elmira, New York, to Middletown, New Jersey. He graduated from Mater Dei High School, a Roman Catholic high school in the New Monmouth section of Middletown. While in high school, he was a volunteer firefighter for three years at the Middletown Township (New Jersey) Fire Department. After high school, he attended Brookdale Community College, before transferring to George Washington University, and then to the Catholic University of America. He did not graduate, instead taking an internship with the administration of President Jimmy Carter. He now calls leaving college one of his "great regrets." In 2004, he returned to Catholic University and gave the commencement address, and in 2008 he received an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree from Ohio State University.

After working in the lobbying arm of the National Association of Broadcasters, Williams began his broadcasting career at KOAM-TV in Pittsburg, Kansas in 1981. A year later he moved back to Washington, D.C. and worked at WTTG-TV as general assignment correspondent. He replaced Maury Povich as host of locally produced Washington D.C chat show Panorama in 1985. In 1985, Williams was hired by CBS and worked as New Jersey correspondent for its Philadelphia affiliate, WCAU-TV. In 1987 Williams was promoted to WCBS-TV in New York, where he soon began anchoring its noon news. He won his first Emmy for his reporting of the October 1987 stock market collapse. In 1993 Williams was hired by NBC national news as its weekend anchor, and in 1994 became the network's chief White House correspondent. In 1996, he began an eight-year run as lead anchor of The News with Brian Williams on MSNBC and CNBC.