2024 Women’s Leadership Award Winner

Judy Woodruff

Judy Woodruff is an Emmy Award winning broadcast journalist and the Senior Correspondent for the PBS Newshour. As the former Anchor and Managing Editor of the PBS NewsHour, she and the late Gwen Ifill were named the first two women to co-anchor a national news broadcast. Her five-decade career, covering politics and twelve presidential elections, led her to launch in 2023 “America at a Crossroads”, a two-year reporting project to understand America’s political divide.

For 12 years Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN. At NBC News, Woodruff was White House Correspondent (1977-1982), and after that servedoneyearasNBC’sTodayshowChiefWashingtonCorrespondent. Sheisthe author of This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982

During her early years at PBS, she was Chief Washington Correspondent for The MacNeil/Lahrer NewsHour (1983-1993). She also anchored Frontline with Judy Woodruff (1984-1990). In 2011 Woodruff was the principal reporter for the PBS Documentary, Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.

Woodruff was the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award, the Poynter Medal, an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in TelevisionNewsandtheRadcliffeMedal. TogethersheandthelateGwenIfillwere awarded Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Additionally, Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting women in communications worldwide. She is a graduate of Duke University where she is a Trustee Emerita. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband, journalist Al Hunt; they are the parents of three children.