Valerie Coleman Morris

Valerie Coleman Morris is a former CNN domestic and international business anchor, Peabody Award winner, three-time Emmy Award winning journalist, and continues to write and narrate the nationally syndicated ratio column, which she created in 1986 called "With the Family in Mind" on CBS Network Radio. These segments focus on family and sandwich generation issues and their money implications. Morris is also a professor in the Multimedia Communications Department at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, California and an author. Her first book, "It's Your Money So Take It Personally®", provides doable, incremental ways for individuals and families to start "banking on the future": building wealth and passing it on to the next generation.

During her many years at CNN, where she gained great visibility and a loyal domestic and international audience, Valerie's dozen daily reports were seen by more than 290 million households, businesses and airport networks.

She discovered that the business news of the day did not always speak to everyone or to all levels of need and understanding. Morris came to believe that financial intelligence should be taught to those less likely to have access to financial information and continue through all the changing needs of one's life.

Morris states, "I want to inspire and inform people so that they can start ‘banking on the future' and begin not only building wealth – but passing the importance of that goal to their children."

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 four decades 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.

Valerie, a product of an Air Force family, lived in England, France, Scotland and Japan by the time she was a junior in high school, perhaps contributing to her ability to comfortably connect to a variety of audiences.

She has a Master's Degree in Broadcast Communications from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and attended San Jose State University for her undergraduate degree. Valerie is a professor in the Multimedia Communications Department at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, a mother of two daughters, co-parent to three more, and grandmother to a 7 and 11 year old. She and her businessman husband Robert, live in the San Francisco Bay Area.