FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW YORK, NY — November 9, 2026 — United Nations officials, journalists and philanthropists gathered at United Nations Headquarters on Monday, November 9, 2026, to celebrate the life of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and the United Nations Foundation, who died on May 6, 2026, at the age of 87.
The two-hour memorial, held in the Economic and Social Council Chamber, brought together several hundred guests from the diplomatic corps, the UN staff, civil society, academia, the media, and the philanthropic community to honor a man who called the United Nations his headquarters in New York.
A Celebration at the United Nations
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres paid tribute to Turner as a visionary and a steadfast believer in our common humanity. He recalled that, through the United Nations Foundation, Turner helped the Organization expand its reach, build new partnerships and drive action on global health, climate and conservation, and nuclear disarmament. “In all he did, Ted Turner bet big on humanity,” the Secretary-General said.
Former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated that the Foundation had changed the course of countries and lives around the world, and urged continued support for multilateralism at a time of mounting challenges.
Speakers in the Chamber included:
Laura Turner Seydel, Ted Turner’s daughter, who recalled that her father was inspired to give by a Mississippi washerwoman who donated her life savings for college scholarships, and who noted that some $3 billion more has since been given to match his gift
Elizabeth Cousens, President and CEO of the United Nations Foundation
Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former CNN correspondent
Ambassador Andrew Young, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former Mayor of Atlanta
Three of Turner’s 14 grandchildren
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper offered remembrances of Turner’s belief that a world watching the same news might become a more peaceful one. The program included music by John Carter Cash and Ana Cristina Cash, Carolina Rial, and the Harlem Gospel Choir.
For further information, please see: At a UN celebration for Ted Turner, memories of a man who saw the power of global cooperation (Associated Press)
A Billion-Dollar Bet on Humanity
In September 1997, Turner stunned a United Nations Association dinner in New York by pledging $1 billion to support the work of the United Nations, at the time the largest individual philanthropic gift in history. Because the UN cannot accept donations from private individuals, the gift was used to create the United Nations Foundation in 1998, which has since mobilized partnerships for global health, gender equality, climate action and sustainable development.
Turner founded CNN in 1980 as the world’s first 24-hour news network, and built a broadcasting enterprise that included WTBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network. He was an America’s Cup-winning yachtsman, a former owner of the Atlanta Braves, a co-founder of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and one of America’s largest private landowners, whose conservation work helped restore the American bison. The Explorers Club honored him three times: as the inaugural recipient of its Communication Award in 1990, for his efforts to promote conservation awareness; with the Lowell Thomas Award in 2013; and with the President’s Award for Conservation in 2024, for his lifelong dedication to environmental and humanitarian causes.
The Call of Ted Turner
On June 11, 2026, AIAC sponsored the first New York memorial for Ted Turner, A Hero’s Celebration: The Life and Legacy of Ted Turner, held at The Explorers Club’s landmark headquarters at 46 East 70th Street. AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie chaired the evening, with co-chairs Richard Wiese, Explorers Club President Emeritus, and John Linnartz of the New York Yacht Club.
Friends and admirers from media, finance, diplomacy, sailing and conservation gathered, in person and on video, to share their reflections on Turner as a media mogul, philanthropist, peacemaker, yachtsman and conservationist. They included:
Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group
Sir Howard Stringer, former Chairman and CEO of Sony Corporation and President of CBS
Senator Sam Nunn, who co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with Turner
Michael Douglas, Academy Award–winning actor and United Nations Messenger of Peace
Tom Johnson, President of CNN for 20 years
Pat Mitchell, former CEO of PBS and CNN Productions
Rita E. Hauser, former U.S. Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights
Theodore Roosevelt IV, conservationist and great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt
Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Trustee of the Nuclear Threat Initiative
Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute
Mikkel Vestergaard, creator of the LifeStraw water filter and the PermaNet bed net
Gary Jobson, America’s Cup Hall of Fame sailor, who sailed with Turner aboard Courageous in its 1977 America’s Cup victory
Diane Brady, Executive Editorial Director of Fortune
Lyndsay Howard, Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Mike Bloomberg
Richard Wiese also shared reflections from Sally Ann Ranney, Turner’s longtime partner and Chair of The Explorers Club’s Conservation Committee. In keeping with Explorers Club tradition, speakers raised a toast and hurled their shot glasses into the Club’s 15th-century fireplace.
The evening’s centerpiece was the premiere of The Call of Ted Turner, an original musical tribute with lyrics, music and orchestration by Mr. Levie, Trustee and Poet Laureate of The Explorers Club, with graphics and videography by AIAC Vice President Isabel C. Carro Toro. The work traces the arc of Turner’s life from the America’s Cup and CNN to the United Nations and the Great Plains, and was met with a sustained standing ovation. The memorial concluded with an eight-bell salute to Turner.
Mr. Levie offered the musical tribute to the United Nation Foundation, UN Association, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Captain Planet, Ted Turner Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Policy Association, New York Yacht Club, Sierra Club and other non-profit organizations whose missions aligned with the values of Ted Turner.
Statement of AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie
“On Monday, in the United Nations Economic and Social Council Chamber, the community Ted Turner served came together to honor the man who served it. Secretary-General António Guterres and former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke of a visionary who changed the course of nations. Laura Turner Seydel reminded us that her father’s greatest gift was inspired by the humblest of examples. Elizabeth Cousens, Maria Ressa and Ambassador Andrew Young remembered a friend to this Organization and to the truth, and Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper paid tribute to the founder who first gave the world a common window on itself. It was a profoundly poignant and fitting tribute, offered in the very chamber where Ted invested so much of his hope.”
“Ted Turner understood that peace is not a gift that history bestows, but a structure that people build by hand, one vaccine, one treaty, one partnership at a time. He measured wealth not by what he kept, but by what he set in motion. He knew that the dangers of our age respect no border, and so his generosity respected none either. Where others saw a world too divided to heal, Ted saw a world too connected to fail.”
“He gave his fortune to the cause of global health, and children who will never know his name are alive because of it. He gave his voice to the cause of nuclear security, and the world is safer for it. He gave his heart to the land and the oceans, and the bison roam the plains once more.”
“The causes Ted championed are causes we hold dear. AIAC and the AIAC Foundation are honored to stand with the institutions he built and supported: the United Nations Foundation, which carries his billion-dollar faith in this Organization into every corner of the globe; the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which he founded with Senator Sam Nunn to keep the world’s most dangerous weapons out of the world’s most dangerous hands; and the United Nations Association, at whose dinner he made his historic pledge. We are privileged as well to support the Council on Foreign Relations and the Foreign Policy Association, which inform the choices on which peace depends; the Carter Center, which wages peace and fights disease where others have given up hope; and the many other institutions that share Ted’s conviction that no nation is secure until every nation is.”
“We are proud to be among those inspired by Ted. His work is not finished; it has been placed in our hands. Let us take it up not in sorrow for what we have lost, but in resolve for what he made possible. And let it be said of our time that when Ted Turner bet on humanity, humanity did not let him down.”
About Ted Turner
Robert Edward “Ted” Turner III (November 19, 1938 – May 6, 2026) was an American businessman, television producer and philanthropist who built one of the most influential media empires in modern history. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in Savannah, Georgia, he took over his father’s Atlanta billboard company in 1963 at age 24 and transformed it into a broadcasting enterprise.
His purchase of a struggling Atlanta UHF station in 1970 became the foundation of the Turner Broadcasting System. He used satellite distribution to turn that station into WTBS, pioneering the cable “superstation,” and in 1980 launched CNN, the first 24-hour news network. He went on to create TNT, Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network, and acquired the MGM film library that anchored much of his programming. His company merged with Time Warner in 1996.
Turner won the America’s Cup in 1977 as skipper of Courageous, owned the Atlanta Braves, World Series champions in 1995, and the Atlanta Hawks, and founded the Goodwill Games to ease Cold War tensions. In 2001 he co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative with former Senator Sam Nunn. One of the largest private landowners in the United States, he devoted much of his land to conservation and built the largest private bison herd in the world.
About the United Nations Foundation
The United Nations Foundation was created in 1998 with Ted Turner’s historic $1 billion pledge, announced in September 1997, to support the work of the United Nations. Turner served as chairman of its board. Because the UN cannot accept gifts from private individuals, the Foundation was established as an independent public charity to connect the UN with philanthropists, businesses, governments and citizens around the world.
The Foundation works with the UN on global health, climate and energy, gender equality and sustainable development, through campaigns such as Nothing But Nets against malaria, Shot@Life for childhood vaccines and Girl Up for adolescent girls’ leadership. Turner’s original gift has helped catalyze more than $3 billion in additional support for UN programs and causes. Elizabeth Cousens serves as the Foundation’s President and CEO.
For further information, see: www.unfoundation.org
About American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing and distribution sites in 24 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia–New Zealand. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, Ahlstrom, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.
AIAC companies serve companies and governmental entities worldwide in all major sectors, including aviation, space, defense, automotive, truck, rail, marine, petrochemical, solar, nuclear, civil engineering and infrastructure, commercial construction, mining, dredging, disaster relief, education, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. AIAC companies are also exclusive, authorized distributors of leading branded industrial products and serve as critical suppliers for the construction of major airports, schools, hospitals, performing arts and sports centers, offices, and hotels throughout Southeast Asia and New Zealand. AIAC is a leading manufacturer of building, street, and highway signage in Europe, and a distributor of electrical products throughout France.
Of note, AIAC purchased Boeing Canada in 2005 and has produced over 10,000 unique components for every Boeing jet plane ever since, reliably serving Boeing from manufacturing facilities in North America. A leader in ultra-high precision jet engine component manufacturing, AIAC companies produce 2,200 fan blades for each jet engine produced by GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell.
AIAC companies actively support exploration into outer space, manufacturing critical components for launching and propelling spacecraft and satellites. AIAC customers in this sector include NASA, the European Space Agency, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Boeing. AIAC companies also lead in the design and manufacture of undersea umbilical cables for worldwide oceanographic research.
AIAC companies produce the critical automotive wire and cable for Tesla, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan. In connection with its kraft paper manufacturing interests in Canada and the US, AIAC controls and sustainably manages 22 million acres of Manitoba, Canada forestland, an area equivalent in size to the nation of Hungary. AIAC affiliate Metallwarenfabrik Gemmingen GmbH, located in Germany, designs, manufactures, and distributes high performance, emergency portable power generators utilized in global conflict zones and during natural disasters.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com
About AIAC Philanthropy
AIAC and the AIAC Foundation support a wide range of nonprofit, nonsectarian, bipartisan organizations which promote international conflict resolution, disaster relief, economic development, environmental sustainability, exploration, and the performing arts. The exploration-focused nonprofit organizations which they actively support include the Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Space Society, and the United States Space Foundation.
AIAC’s other beneficiaries include the Appeal of the Nobel Peace Laureates Foundation Inc., the Asia Society, the Atlantic Council, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – Gates Philanthropy Partners, the Bretton Woods Committee, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Carter Center, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Economic Club of New York, the Foreign Policy Association, the Institut Français des Relations Internationales, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Crisis Group, the International Rescue Committee, the Japan Society, the JFK School of Government of Harvard University, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the Sierra Club, the Trilateral Commission, and the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie is a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, its Poet Laureate, and a Member of its Annual Dinner Committee. L. M. Levie also serves as Trustee of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, Zoological Society of London, and the Asia Society, and is a member of the Yale CEO Summit.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com | aiac.com/our-values
Media Contact
Isabel Carro-Toro, Vice President
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
+34 689 295 827 (Spain)
+1 787 244 3175 (USA)
icarro-toro@aiac.com
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