Zain Asher

BA Modern Languages (French and Spanish) 2001
Author and Journalist
Honorary Fellow

Zain E Asher is an author and journalist at CNN International, anchoring the network’s primetime global news program, One World with Zain Asher. She has anchored during some of the network’s biggest breaking news stories, including the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the 2021 Israel-Hamas war. She has interviewed countless world leaders, newsmakers and CEOs for the program. In 2014, Asher was a part of a CNN team sent to Nigeria to report on the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls by Boko Haram militants in Chibok, Nigeria. The team coverage of the horrific abduction was recognized with a prestigious 2014 Peabody Award.

Prior to CNN, she was a reporter at Money magazine and was also a freelance reporter at News 12 Networks in New York and Connecticut. She has lived in Mexico, Nigeria, France, and the US and has filed reports from a dozen African countries.

“I grew up at Keble. It was a period of enormous personal growth—of stretching myself both intellectually and personally. When I first stepped into the quad as a shy 18-year-old, I remember feeling certain that I didn’t belong. Every time I wandered into a tutorial, lecture or class, I was overtaken by a lingering sense of dread that screamed “you shouldn’t be here”. By the time I graduated four years later, I was independent, open and fiercely assertive. Keble gave me the push I needed to take risks, to challenge myself, to ask important questions of myself and others. Few of my achievements would be possible without my time here.”

After graduating from Keble, she moved to New York to attend Columbia University where she received an MS in Broadcast Journalism.

Zain is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who survived both civil war and famine before fleeing to London. She was raised by a single mother after her father was tragically killed in a car accident in 1988.

In 2022, she released her memoir, Where the Children Take Us, with critical acclaim from The Times, The Associated Press, Vogue, Elle Magazine, NPR, People Magazine and Newsweek and many more.