ICON | Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Hadda, near Jalalabad, Afghanistan by Brent Stirton for CNN.

Amanpour is the first journalist of my memory. She covered the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe for CNN, the then-fledgling international news network—one of the few English channels available to us while living as ex-pats in Switzerland in the late 1980s. Even if I was too young to understand the content of her reports, I clearly remember her presence in our living room. She's undeniably fearless and a great inspiration.