George Stephanoploulos To Open Conference

George Stephanopoulos, the Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News and anchor of ABC’s Sunday morning political affairs program, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, will speak at the Opening Breakfast on Thursday, February 4, 2010, at the 19th Annual Leadership 100 Conference. He will be presented with the Archbishop Iakovos Leadership 100 Award for Excellence.

As Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC, he oversees the network’s coverage of Presidential and Congressional politics and reports on political and policy stories for all ABC News platforms, including “World News with Charles Gibson,” “Nightline,” “Good Morning America” and ABC News’ digital properties, including ABCNews.com and ABC News NOW.

During the 2008 election cycle, Stephanopoulos interviewed every major Republican and Democratic presidential candidate as part of “This Week’s” award winning “On the Trail” series, which has been honored with the Annenberg School of Journalism’s Walter Cronkite Award for Political Journalism two times in a row in 2007 and 2009. During the 2008 presidential race, Stephanopoulos conducted multiple interviews with Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. in studio and on the trail. In August 2007, he moderated separate debates for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in Des Moines, Ia., the only two Sunday morning debates of the primary cycle. He also moderated a Democratic debate with ABC News’ Charles Gibson in Philadelphia in April 2008.

In his role as anchor of “This Week,” Stephanopoulos has interviewed several key members of the Obama administration, including President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. During the Bush administration, he interviewed every key member of the President’s Cabinet, as well as President Bush, First Lady Laura Bush and Vice President Cheney. In July 2003, he conducted a rare joint interview with Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Breyer, the first ever Sunday morning interview with two sitting Supreme Court Justices. He conducted a second interview with Justice Breyer in fall 2005.

Stephanopoulos has played a pivotal role in the network’s coverage of breaking news stories for more than a decade. In spring 2005, he reported from Rome and contributed to ABC News’ duPont Award-winning coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II. Following the explosion of the Columbia shuttle, he anchored a two-hour special edition of “This Week” on Feb. 2, 2003. And on Sept. 11, 2001, he was one of the first reporters on the scene at Ground Zero.

Stephanopoulos was named Chief Washington Correspondent in December 2005 and began anchoring “This Week” in September 2002. Previously he was an ABC News correspondent, reporting on a wide variety of political, domestic and international stories for “This Week,” “World News Tonight,” “Good Morning America” and other ABC News programs and special event broadcasts. He joined ABC News in 1997 as a news analyst for “This Week.”

Prior to joining ABC News, Stephanopoulos served in the Clinton administration as the senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy. He is the author of “All Too Human,” a No. 1 New York Times bestseller on President Clinton’s first term and the 1992 and 1996 Clinton/Gore campaigns.

Stephanopoulos received his Master’s degree in Theology from Balliol College, Oxford University, England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and graduated summa cum laude in political science. He and his wife, Alexandra Wentworth, live in Washington, DC, with their daughters, Elliott and Harper.

He is the son of Fr. Robert and Nikki Stephanopoulos. Fr. Robert was Dean of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York for many years while Nikki was the long-time Director of News and Information at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. George served as an altar boy during the lifetime of Archbishop Iakovos often when the Archbishop officiated at the Divine Litrugy.