Judy Woodruff Biography

Since 1976, Judy Carline Woodruff has been an accomplished American broadcast journalist, working in network, cable, and public television news. Throughout her career, she covered every presidential election and convention since 1976, conducted numerous interviews with heads of state, and moderated U.S. presidential debates. After graduating from Duke University in 1968, Woodruff began her career in local television news in Atlanta before being appointed as the White House correspondent for NBC News in 1976, a role she held for six years. She joined PBS in 1982, where she continued her White House reports for the PBS NewsHour (formerly The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour), in addition to hosting another program. In 1993, Woodruff moved to CNN to co-host Inside Politics and CNN WorldView with Bernard Shaw until he left the network. She then returned to PBS and the NewsHour in 2006 after leaving CNN in 2005. In 2013, Woodruff and Gwen Ifill were named official anchors, succeeding founding presenter Jim Lehrer, and they shared managing newsgathering duties until Ifill's passing in 2016. Woodruff then succeeded Ifill as the program's sole main presenter. In May 2022, Woodruff announced her intention to step down as the NewsHour's anchor at year's end, and she delivered her final broadcast on December 30, 2022.

From 2006 – 2013, Judy anchored a monthly program for Bloomberg Television, “Conversations with Judy Woodruff.” In 2006, she was a visiting professor at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. In 2005, she was a visiting fellow at Harvard University’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

At NBC News, Woodruff was White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that she served as NBC’s Today Show chief Washington correspondent. She wrote the book, This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley. Her reporting career began in Atlanta, Georgia, where she covered state and local government.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in journalism and communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, The Duke Endowment and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and is a director of Public Radio International and the National Association to End Homelessness. She is a former member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a former director of the National Museum of American History and a former trustee of the Urban Institute.

Judy is a graduate of Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

She is the recent recipient of the Radcliffe Medal, the Poynter Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism from Arizona State University. She received the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Television from Washington State University, the Gaylord Prize for Excellence in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Oklahoma and the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media from the University of South Dakota. She was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and received the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association and the Duke Distinguished Alumni Award, among others.

She is the recipient of more than 25 honorary degrees.

Judy lives in Washington, DC, with her husband, journalist Al Hunt, and they are the parents of three children: Jeffrey, Benjamin and Lauren.

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