Neeraj Khemlani is senior vice president and chief creative officer of the Hearst Corporation, as of December 2012. He joined Hearst in 2009 after serving as a senior executive at Yahoo! News since 2006. Prior to that, Khemlani was a producer at the CBS News60 Minutes television news magazine, where he is responsible for researching, reporting and writing stories with various CBS News correspondents. Before joining CBS News in 1998, Mr. Khemlani was an associate producer for ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings and also produced pieces with Robert Krulwich for Nightline as well as Good Morning America. He is a term member of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He graduated with a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University and a 1992 undergraduate degree from Cornell University.[1] He is married to Heather Cabot, an anchor and correspondent for ABC News. Mr. Khemlani is of Indian heritage, born in Singapore and raised in New York.
He has reported on the shadowy markets and bazaars of Pakistan’s northwest frontier, a lawless region where CBS News set up a sting operation to buy weapons of mass destruction. He also co-produced a three part series with Dan Rather that revealed what Osama bin Laden’s closest associates, advisors and comrade-in-arms were doing in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Sudan the summer before September 11.
He has been responsible for landing many exclusive interviews and stories around the world. A few years ago, he convinced Libya’s leader, Col. Qaddafi, to do a comprehensive interview with Charlie Rose. Mr. Khemlani also convinced the Russian government to show CBS News some of its most private nuclear facilities, including a secret city built inside a mountain in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. It is there where the Russians explained to CBS News that they could no longer pay the salaries of the starving scientists and soldiers who live there and guard the site’s growing stockpile of plutonium.
He has also done stories on numerous conflicts, including the Afghan war, the Sudanese civil war, America’s secret war against the Cali and Medellindrug cartels, the Bosnian tragedy and the invasion of Haiti.
Mr. Khemlani has also profiled numerous scientific inventors like Dean Kamen and his Segway human transporter, musicians like Jay-Z and the Grateful Dead, actresses like Bollywood star Aishwarya Rai and businessmen like Russell Simmons and Rick Wagoner, the chairman of General Motors, who unveiled his hydrogen car on the program. He was nominated for a news Emmy Award for his 60 Minutes story on the Dinner Set Gang, the best jewel thief team in America.
Awards
2006 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine
2004 Emmy nomination for business reporting
2003 Emmy nomination for Best Interview
2002 Edward R. Murrow award for best investigative reporting
1995 DuPont Award for participation in ABC News’ coverage of the war in Bosnia.
