Biographie
Zain Verjee (born February 11, 1974) is the Founder & CEO of the boutique media advisory firm theZVG. TheZVG believes that powerful story making can transform traditional narratives and shape new realities for people, communities and our planet. Africa is the center of theZVG's operations, where it works to bring power to women and girls. The team deploys the superpowers of creatives to craft and disperse messages on screen, on stage and online.
TheZVG has worked with a deep lineup of organizations and entities including the United Nations Global Compact, Bloomberg Live, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Pfizer Inc., Equity Group Foundation of Kenya, the Aga Khan Development Network, Mastercard Foundation, World Health Organization, Dangote Group, GE Africa, OCP, The Corporate Council on Africa, Africa CDC, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on their communications and content strategies.
Zain is a highly sought-after facilitator and interviewer and has spoken on platforms such as TED and Africa House. On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, 2022, Zain was the Executive Producer of Unstoppable Africa, an energetic two-day gathering in New York City presented by the Global Africa Business Initiative and the United Nations Global Compact. The event included robust dives on how Africa offers a powerful business ecosystem that, when activated, brings prosperity to all Africans and citizens of the world. The tagline "When Africa Wins, The World Wins" has gathered momentum from this conference. The film she produced for Unstoppable Africa has been widely lauded as one of the few films to open an African conference, that capture the voice, the youth, the perspective of Africans themselves, on how they see the continent.
She was the founding Executive Producer and Host of the 2021 and 2022 Qatar Economic Forum, powered by Bloomberg. The forum is the Middle East's leading voice dedicated to global business and investment, focusing on the major economic issues facing international CEOs, Heads of State, and money markets.
As of 2022, Zain is grappling with the NFT and Web3 world as a self proclaimed, NFT Explorer. She also launched ZeeVeeNFT, a channel dedicated to educating her community on the basics, trends, and news surrounding Web3. In conjunction she curated an original NFT Collection, The Luka Press Club, a virtual press club positioned to advance storytelling and produce a new media ecosystem in both the metaverse and the real world. Zain also generated a poetry-driven NFT collection on OpenSea that seeks to break the silence and validate women struggling with failed fertility efforts. She has been featured in podcasts such as Culture by C3, a show about fulfilling the cultural promise of the internet, where she discusses the opportunities that Web3 presents for Africa.
In 2019, Zain teamed up with former CNN colleague Isha Sesay to bring the world Rouse, a platform for women of African descent. It was launched in Marrakech with the full support and partnership with the Republic of Togo. The gathering took place at the Jnane Tamsna Boutique Hotel. Rouse curated a group of forty women of African descent from across the globe, a one of a kind un-conference experience with three days of talks, activities, and discourse centered around the themes of the "havoc and harmony" that come with being such disruptive forces in their lives. Rouse, which Zain and Isha co-founded with entrepreneurs Chidi Afulezi and Suneeta Olympio, was conceived as a live event platform for women of African descent to connect, recharge, and build a global sisterhood of Rouse Woman who collaborate on ventures, creative endeavors, and topics. Since leaving CNN, both Zain and Isha observed there is a broader space to explore in connecting trailblazing women from the continent to women in the African diaspora including native North American and European women.
EDUCATION Zain attended the top private schools in Nairobi, Kenya, Hillcrest Preparatory School and Hillcrest Secondary School in Nairobi. She received her undergraduate degree in English Literature from McGill University in Montreal (with honors), with a minor in International Development Studies in 1995. She attended York University in Toronto, Canada, to do a Masters in Environmental Studies. She did not complete this two-year degree program, as she chose to pursue a career in radio in Kenya when an opportunity arose.
Many years later, she graduated from Oxford University in England with a Masters of Studies degree in Creative Writing in 2015 specializing in non-fiction writing. She has written a TV series pilot, a book of poetry, and continues to work on her crime fiction novel about a Kenyan female detective, Lucy Onyango.
CAREER Zain joined CNN in 2000 after being rejected almost 10 times. Prior to her hiring at 24 years old, she was a news reader on Kenya Television Network, Nairobi and as a radio DJ for 98.4 Capital FM. Zain was the anchor of CNN International's European daytime program "World One". She started her CNN on-air life as a co-anchor of CNN International's Your World Today with Jim Clancy. She worked as a newsreader for The Situation Room, covering Condoleezza Rice as a State Department correspondent. As the State Department Correspondent covering Condoleezza Rice, Zain traveled the world covering US foreign policy. Among her many trips she covered the historic trip Rice took to Libya, and eventually was a lead reporter covering the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. In July 2006, she reported from the Korean DMZ, winning an award for the coverage.
In September 2006, she conducted an exclusive interview with former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami on his first visit to Chicago. She covered the Kenyan-post election violence story, the Westgate terror attacks in Kenya, the Queen's Jubilee celebrations and developed an expertise on air for CNN's coverage on Somali piracy and maritime security. She spent almost 14 years at CNN as an anchor and correspondent, living in Atlanta, Washington DC and London. In April 2014, Verjee announced she was leaving CNN to create her own company.
She was a startup founder and content creator, co-founding aKoma Media, a continental network of workspaces for Africa's creative and cultural economy, in 2015. Her other ventures include Amplify, a content creator fellowship with participants from East/West Africa and the US, in partnership with MasterCard Foundation. Training and paying African creative talent was the centerpiece of this initiative. aKoma Media ultimately failed and Zain started theZVG.
As of 2022, Zain actively serves as the Chair of the Board for Wildlife Direct International, an organization working toward preserving Africa's critical wildlife species. A position she's held from 2017. From 2018-2022, she served as a Board Member of Equity Group Foundation, a non-profit aiming to enhance the social and economic prosperity of people in the African region. Since 2020, Zain has been a Senior Associate (Non Resident) for the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The program seeks to conduct sustained, timely research and analysis on the major elements of U.S. policy toward Africa. She is also a contributing author at The National News, producing opinionated pieces on Africa.
PERSONAL LIFE Zain is an Ismaili Muslim, a minority group in the Shia Sect of Islam.
Her personal journey has been an uphill battle as she's suffered from Psoriasis since her early childhood. She published her story on CNN: "CNN anchor battles her own skin and wins," "CNN Anchor Zain Verjee: How I Fight Psoriasis" and has been featured on the cover of People Magazine. She also did a deep dive with Cindy Lauper on her podcast, PsO in the Know, discussing their shared struggles and perseverance throughout their Psoriasis journey. Zain won the battle against the disease through eating well and maintaining a good mental attitude.
When she was 23, she published a children's book, "Live & On the Air". It explores the experiences of a young girl who moves from rural Kenya to Nairobi to work as a broadcaster.
Zain resides in the Los Angeles area and Nairobi, Kenya. In her spare time (which she prioritizes) she likes to swim butterfly, ride horses and windsurf.
