She has shared the world stage with Presidents and Princesses but at heart Zain Verjee is just a Nairobi girl. She is an ardent lover of the city of her youth where she attended Hillcrest Secondary School. While at university her father mentioned to her that a new radio station in town was looking for a traffic reporter. She decided to try out at 98.4 Capital FM Kenya and, to her surprise, landed the role. Her life was now defined by early mornings to report on the city’s traffic and travel updates before she was promoted to a presenter of the mid-morning radio show “Love Line”.
Then came the horror of August 7th 1998. A bomb went off at the United States embassy in Nairobi’s Central Business District. Zain was on air at Lonrho House when the building shook from the force of the bomb and smoke started rising in the horizon. The morning became a turning point as bearing witness to the shattering of her home city turned her to journalism. Zain soon joined KTN News Kenya in the hopes of becoming a television anchor.
But while her career in media was growing Zain was at a personal odds. Radio had been safe but being on TV was going to be a challenge. All her life Zain had suffered from psoriasis, a debilitating skin disease defined by intolerable and severe itching and typified by multiple skin lesions and scales. Often she would be covered up neck to toe, to hide her skin as the disease took a brutal toll on her confidence. Living with skin prone to erupting with flakes and pus had made her shy of relationships and the human interactions we take for granted. She recalls how once on holiday in Israel while swimming in the Dead Sea someone asked her to get out of the water because of the condition of her skin. Stigma came in addition to the pain and constant itchiness she suffered with on a daily basis. She became an expert at concealing her pain as she pushed forward in her work. Support and strength from her family and her determined nature helped her succeed in a very public career that was in conflict with her medical condition.
In 1999 an unprecedented opportunity came her way to audition with CNN for a correspondent position. She sent her demo tape to the CNN team in Atlanta but her application was declined due to her lack of a journalism degree. But Zain does not take the word no to heart – she had overcome bigger challenges and so decided to fly out to Atlanta to try and get a screen test at CNN. During the few hours she spent at the CNN office after her screen test, she introduced and marketed herself to anyone she could meet. Her natural charm and absolute tenacity worked. She was hired as a writer and producer while under consideration for the role of an international news anchor. In 2000 she was living a new dream. After years of setbacks she had overcome her psoriasis through natural-nutrition focused healing and she had landed her dream job as an international news anchor.
Zain represented #TeamKe for 14 years at CNN bringing the world’s stories into living rooms across the globe. In addition she finally gained courage to share the health trials she went through in the hope that others battling similar conditions would gain the confidence it took her so long to find.
But Zain wasn’t done yet. In 2015 she co-founded aKoma Media, a company dedicated to giving African content creators the skills and networks for accelerated entry and connection into global media. Through aKoma she enables other sons and daughters of Africa to develop their storytelling skills in preparation for media careers through the Amplify Fellowship.
Zain’s determination allowed her to conquer her fears while bravely sharing a smile on the most public of stages.