Gwen Ifill

Gwen Ifill is one of the nation’s preeminent broadcast journalists. She has earned both national and international respect and admiration for her work as moderator and managing editor of the Public Broadcasting Service’s long-running and highly acclaimed series Washington Week, a roundtable discussion and analysis of current events in the nation’s capital, and as senior correspondent for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, conducting interviews, discussions, and debates; reporting from the field; and serving as a backup anchor to Lehrer.

In her career, she has frequently brought national attention to issues affecting women and the African-American community and, informed by painful personal experience, was a strong voice in support of the Rutgers women’s basketball team during last year’s controversy surrounding disparaging remarks made about the team by a talk radio personality. Her resolve to also bring to the forefront the broader issue of the de facto acceptance of offensive “trash talk” in the media, in sports, and in American society as a whole focused much needed attention on this disturbing and hurtful practice.

Born in New York City, Ifill earned a degree in communications at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and began her career in journalism working at the Boston Herald American. She later worked for the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Washington Post, covering such areas as the White House, Congress, presidential campaigns, and government. She became the White House correspondent for the New York Times in 1991. Her work in broadcast journalism includes five years with NBC News, where she covered politics, public affairs, and national trends for The Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Today, and MSNBC. She joined the NewsHour in October 1999, and assumed her role at Washington Week that same month. She moderated the vice presidential debate of the 2004 presidential campaign, a role reserved for the most respected journalists.

Ifill serves on the boards of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and the Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism in Washington, D.C. She has won many honors for journalistic excellence from groups including the National Press Foundation, Ebony magazine, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and American Women in Radio and Television. She also served as the 2007 Senator Wynona Lipman Chair in Women’s Political Leadership at Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.