National Football Foundation

A four-year quarterback at Yale under College Football Hall of Fame coach Carm Cozza, Stone Phillips received the F.G. Brown Award for outstanding athletic and academic achievement. The school’s record holder for career yards per completion (16.77), he helped the Bulldogs to an 8-1 record and an Ivy League title in 1976. Compiling a 3.8 GPA in philosophy, Phillips was a member of the Scroll and Key Society. After graduating from Yale, Phillips moved to Atlanta, where he worked as a remedial reading and math teacher at the Fulton County Juvenile Detention Center, while moonlighting as a waiter before landing an entry-level news position at WXIA-TV, the local NBC affiliate.

In 1980, after less than two years as a reporter, writer and broadcast producer in Atlanta, Phillips was hired by ABC News as an assignment editor for their Washington, D.C., news bureau. In 1982 he began filing stories as an on air correspondent for ABC, covering such major events as the war in Lebanon, the exodus of Vietnamese boat people in the mid-1980s and Rajiv Gandhi's election campaign following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi. In 1986, Phillips was promoted to a regular role on the ABC news magazine 20/20. Beginning that year he also served as a substitute host on Good Morning America and a sports anchor for ABC’s World News Sunday.

Phillips ended his 12-year relationship with ABC in 1992, joining NBC News to serve as co-anchor with Jane Pauley on Dateline NBC. While at NBC News, Phillips also hosted Weekend Magazine with Stone Phillips. His interview with Bernhard Goetz, a man who shot four black teenagers in the New York City Subway, earned Phillips an Emmy Award for Outstanding Interview. Phillips co-anchored Dateline NBC from its inception until July 2, 2007. As of 2012, Phillips was contributing reports to the PBS Newshour. In 2013, Phillips produced and hosted Moving with Grace, a documentary airing on PBS stations that chronicled his efforts and those of his siblings to provide care for their aging parents.