Holly Williams is part of the elite, hand-picked team chosen by Bob Schieffer to speak at this year’s Schieffer Symposium.
Williams has been with CBS News for three years as a foreign correspondent, responsible for reporting the news from other countries. She covers wars and political conflicts, and she reports for CBS News broadcasts and other platforms like the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley and CBS This Morning.
“Williams has covered the growing ISIS situation and has previously reported from Syria and the Gaza strip,” said Margaret Kelly, executive director of community projects.
Williams’ experience with these conflicts allows her to be one of the distinguished panelists for this year’s symposium.
“He [Schieffer] picks people that he feels are going to be able to speak to current news events and things going on in the world today,” Kelly said.
Williams responded to a tweet earlier this week expressing her future arrival to TCU.
@kyliealexandrra I’m very much looking forward to it. Thanks!
— Holly Williams (@HollyMAWilliams) April 4, 2015
The big story students can expect Williams to speak on is her time reporting in the Middle East. However, students should note the legacy that Williams and others like her have created.
In a historically male-dominated field, Williams and others, such as Elizabeth Palmer and Clarissa Ward, have become pioneers for female foreign correspondents. Williams credits a part of her success in foreign correspondent reporting to her gender.
“I think the one benefit in this part of the world being a woman is that sometimes it can be quite disarming for people to see women, to see a foreign woman, and they are perhaps less likely to be suspicious of a foreign woman than a foreign man… less of a threat,” Williams said in a feature for Capital.
These benefits and her legacy are interlaced throughout the stories she has published – stories that later earned her awards, such as the 2012 George Polk Award for a report about a Chinese dissident’s escape to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.