What a night! FWA Connect Live turned the Green Fig into networking central!

The FWA is pleased to share that Stephanie Ruhle will be honored as the 2026 Private Sector Woman of the Year at the FWA's 70th Anniversary Gala on October 8, 2026. Stephanie Ruhle is the host of MS NOW’s Money Power Politics with Stephanie Ruhle and serves as MS NOW’s Senior Business Analyst, appearing across all linear, digital, and social platforms. Ruhle is known for her business acumen, hard-hitting style, original reporting, and for bringing humanity to her news coverage. She is also the co-host of the live, weekly Q&A show, “ Velshi & Ruhle: Full Disclosure ,” part of the MS NOW Membership. Ruhle has interviewed leaders in politics, business, entertainment, and sports ranging from President Biden to Stephen Curry, from Jamie Dimon to Jamie Lee Curtis. As a Wall Street veteran, she is known for bringing her business acumen and hard-hitting style to high-profile interviews, for her original reporting, and for bringing humanity into her news coverage.

We are pleased to announce Steve Liesman, CNBC’s senior economics reporter, as emcee of the FWA's 70th Anniversary Gala on October 8, 2026. As CNBC’s senior economics reporter, Steve Liesman reports on all aspects of the economy, including the Federal Reserve and major economic indicators. He appears on “ Squawk Box ” (M-F, 6 AM-9 AM ET), as well as other CNBC programs throughout the business day. Liesman joined CNBC from The Wall Street Journal , where he served as a senior economics reporter covering monetary policy, international economics, academic research, and productivity. At the Journal , Liesman previously worked as an energy reporter and Moscow bureau chief. He won an Emmy for his coverage of the financial crisis and was a member of the reporting team recognized with a Pulitzer Prize for stories chronicling the crash of the Russian financial markets.

 The FWA is pleased to share that Jonathan Dambrot will be honored as the 2026 Male Ally of the Year at the FWA's 70th Anniversary Gala on October 8, 2026. Jonathan Dambrot is CEO and Co-Founder of Cranium AI, the independent end-to-end platform for enterprise AI security and governance. He has built a category leader once before — and is doing it again for the AI era. Before Cranium, Jonathan grew Prevalent from a startup into a Gartner- and Forrester-recognized leader in third-party risk management, through its 2016 sale to Insight Partners. As a Partner at KPMG, he led third-party security globally, launched the firm's AI security services, and incubated Cranium inside KPMG Studio — spinning it out of stealth in April 2023 on a simple thesis: every SaaS application is now an AI application, so every SaaS risk is now an AI risk.