International Matrix Award

Barbara S. Cochran

Barbara Cochran, a news executive whose career includes top jobs in the broadcast, print and non-profit worlds, is the Curtis B. Hurley Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Cochran is based in the School’s bureau in Washington, D.C., where she has spent her entire career. She works with the School’s faculty to teach and provide course content for students. Cochran also engages in programs of research, consulting and training aimed at improving the practice of journalism, working with the Committee of Concerned Journalists, also located in Washington, and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute.

Cochran served for 12 years as president of the Radio Television Digital News Association, the world’s largest organization serving the electronic news profession. At RTDNA, Cochran championed the First Amendment rights of journalists, launched initiatives in ethics and diversity and led the association’s inclusion of digital journalists in its membership. RTDNA received the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism during her tenure.

Previously, Cochran served as managing editor of the Washington Star, vice president for news for National Public Radio, executive producer of NBC’s Meet the Press and vice president and Washington bureau chief for CBS News. She has supervised coverage of stories from Watergate to the Persian Gulf War and played a leading role in the coverage of every election and political convention for 24 years. At NPR, she directed the creation of Morning Edition, the program that cemented NPR’s position as an essential national news provider. During her tenure, NPR won two DuPont-Columbia Awards.

Cochran has been recognized with a number of awards, including The Media Institute’s Freedom of Speech Award, The AWC Matrix Foundation’s Edith Wortman First Amendment Award, the Library of American Broadcasting’s Giants of Broadcasting Award and RTDNF’s First Amendment Award.

Cochran has served as a judge for the DuPont-Columbia, George Foster Peabody and Hearst Collegiate Journalism Awards. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. Cochran is co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Cochran has a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York and a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Cady McClain

Cady McClain, a 6-time Emmy nominee and twice a winner. McClain has been an entertainment industry professional since the age of 9. “Seeing is Believing: Women Direct“ marks her first foray into documentary filmmaking, and the first two festival screenings have paid off; Being singled out for a jury award at the 2017 Newport Beach Film Festival for the 30-minute version of her film, and the Audience Award for a Feature Film at the 2017 SOHO Int’l. Film Festival for the 60-minute version.

Best known as an actress (All My Children, My Favorite Year, St. Elsewhere) she has worked in major studio movies and television and with major stars and indie films her entire career. She began her transition to directing with the short films, “Flip Fantasia” and the award-winning “The World of Albert Fuh.” Both were Official Selections at multiple film festivals. Before that she served as Associate Producer on the independent feature, “How We Got Away With It.” Creator of the popular “Suzy F*cking Homemaker” web series, she was recently Emmy nominated for directing “Venice: The Series.”

Tory Johnson

Tory Johnson helps women make great things happen. She made the shift from employee to entrepreneur and built two multi-million dollar career-focused businesses–Women For Hire and Spark & Hustle–after a painful firing. Tory started Women For Hire in 1999 in the corner of her bedroom, with twin babies Emma and Jake crawling at her feet. Armed only with an AOL address and dial-up Internet service, she hoped to make a decent living to support her family and help women find jobs. Since then, she’s helped thousands of women advance their careers. She speaks frequently to audiences about the deliberate steps women need to turn their passion and purpose to profit.

In post-recession 2010, Tory designed a unique, hands-on program to help current and aspiring women entrepreneurs turns their passion into a profit: Spark & Hustle was born. Today Spark and Hustle provides a variety of programs – from conferences serving hundreds of women to the more intimate premium intensive programs.

A conversation with a TV executive gave Tory the inspiration she needed to conquer her life-long battle with weight. She was ready to make a major shift in the way that she looked, felt and lived. Her 2013 bestseller, The Shift, detailing how she lost 62 pounds in a year, is available in paperback with Shift-worthy recipes and stories from women who have made their shifts.

Tory had no trust fund, college degree, celebrity endorsements or impressive Rolodex to give her a leg up. She credits her success in business and her weight loss to consistent actions she takes each and every day.

Tory’s mission is to help others change their mind for a better life. She is a weekly contributor on ABC’s Good Morning America where she curates and presents the hugely popular Deals & Steals segment, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of THE SHIFT, a contributing editor to SUCCESS magazine and a popular speaker. Oh, and she’s a wife and mom, too.

www.toryjohnson.com
Twitter @ToryJohnson

Bonnie St. John

For more than 20 years, Bonnie St. John has circled the globe as a keynote speaker and leadership consultant for over 500 different companies, non-profits and associations. St. John has risen to the highest levels of achievement in a variety of endeavors throughout her life. Despite having her right leg amputated at age five, she became the first African-American ever to win Olympic or Paralympic medals in ski racing, taking home a silver and two bronze medals in downhill events at the 1984 Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria. St. John graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, taking an M. Litt. in Economics and was appointed by President Bill Clinton as a Director of Human Capital Policy on the White House National Economic Council.

The celebrated author of six books, St. John co-authored her most recent #1 bestseller, How Great Women Lead, with her teenage daughter.

St. John has been featured extensively in both national and international media including: The Today Show, CNN, CBS Morning News, NBC News, PBS, NPR and The New York Times, as well as People, “O” and Essencemagazines, to name just a few. NBC Nightly News called Bonnie St. John, “One of the five most inspiring women in America.”

Billie Letts

Internationally recognized, award-winning author Billie Letts is a native Tulsan and retired teacher of English and Creative Writing at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. Author of four screenplays and numerous short stories, Letts is best known for her four internationally acclaimed novels: Where the Heart Is; The Honk and Holler Opening Soon; Shoot the Moon and most recently, Made in the U.S.A.  Published in 14 countries with more than 3 million copies sold worldwide, her first novel, Where the Heart Is, reached the coveted number one slot on the New York Times paperback bestseller list. In addition, Where the Heart Is was selected for Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club and screen rights for the book were sold to 20th Century Fox. The movie starring Natalie Portman, Ashley Judd and Stockard Channing was a big success.

Even though she did not start writing her first novel until age 54, Letts has made an indelible mark among her peers. In 1994 she won the prestigious Walker Percy Literary Award at the New Orleans Writers Conference. In 1996 and again in 1999, she won the Oklahoma Book Award for fiction. In 2004 The Honk and Holler Opening Soon was the first book selected for the “Oklahoma Reads Oklahoma” statewide library program.

The AWC International Matrix Award was not awarded in 2010. The AWC National Conference moved to a bi-annual event in odd numbered years, and the award is presented there.

Ann Curry

Ann Curry, news anchor of America’s number one morning news program, NBC News’ Today, and anchor of Dateline NBC, has been selected as the 2009 AWC International Matrix Award recipient.

Curry has distinguished herself in global humanitarian reporting, frequently traveling to remote areas of the world for under-reported stories. She has conducted numerous exclusive interviews with world leaders and dignitaries, including a one-on-one with Dalai Lama during his trip to the U.S. amid violence in Tibet in April 2008, and a sit-down with former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto just two months before her assassination in December 2007. Curry also talked to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in his first-ever interview with an American news organization.

During the span of one year, she traveled three times to Sudan to report on the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad. While there, she provided in-depth reports focusing on the victims who have been caught in the deadly conflict of that region, as well as exclusive interviews with the Sudanese and Chadian presidents.

Curry first joined NBC News in August 1990 as a Chicago-based correspondent. Since then, she has distinguished herself in global humanitarian reporting frequently traveling to remote areas of the world for under-reported stories. During the span of one year, from March 2006 to March 2007, she traveled three times to Sudan to report on the violence and ethnic cleansing taking place in Darfur and Chad. While there, she provided in-depth reports focusing on the victims who have been caught in the deadly conflict of that region, and she also conducted exclusive interviews with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and Chadian President Idrsiss Deby.

Curry has earned four Emmy Awards, four Golden Mikes, several Associated Press Certificates of Excellence, two Gracie Allen Awards, and an award for Excellence in Reporting from the NAACP. She has been honored by AmeriCares, Save the Children, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Asian American Journalists Association. She has won numerous awards for her charity work, primarily for breast cancer research.

Christiane Amanpour

Christiane Amanpour,CNN’s chief international correspondent based in New York, has reported on most crises from the world’s many news hotspots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans.

Her assignments have ranged from exclusive interviews with world leaders to reporting on the human consequences of natural disasters or covering events from the heart of war zones. She has received wide acclaim and numerous awards for her work, particularly for her extensive coverage of conflicts in the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East.

Throughout her career, Amanpour has succeeded in securing a number of high-profile and exclusive interviews with world leaders forCNN. In the Middle East, these interviews read like a “Who’s Who?” of the region’s leaders. Just as Iran’s nuclear crisis was developing, Amanpour became the first and only journalist to interview Iran’s newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. She was also granted a world exclusive with Syrian President Bashar el Assad in 2005 on the U.N. investigation into Syria’s involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

Amanpour has received many prestigious awards in recognition of for her reporting on major world stories, including nine Emmys. Most recently, she earned her fourth George Foster Peabody award for God’s Warriors. For her reporting from the Balkans, Amanpour received a News and Documentary Emmy, two Peabody awards, two George Polk Awards, a Courage in Journalism Award, a Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival Gold Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. In 2007, she was recognized in the birthday honors list of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II with a highly prestigious Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Amanpour began her CNN career in 1983 as an assistant on the network’s international assignment desk in Atlanta. She has since worked in CNN’s London, New York, Paris and Frankfurt bureaus.

Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas, the long-time White House correspondent for United Press International,has been named the 2007 winner of the prestigious International Matrix Award.

Thomas has covered the daily White House beat for every president since John F. Kennedy. After a career at UPI spanning more than 50 years, Helen now writes a syndicated political opinion column for Hearst Newspapers. In her latest book, released July 2006, “Watchdogs of Democracy?,” she delves into how journalism has changed.

Born in Kentucky, Thomas spent her childhood in Detroit and graduated from Michigan’s Wayne State University. Her first job was as a copy girl at the now-defunct Washington Daily News.

Thomas joined the staff at United Press International in 1943, where she spent 12 years writing news for radio, covering the FBI and the federal government. In 1961, she covered the White House during John F. Kennedy’s presidency, and began closing presidential press conferences by saying, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Thomas has traveled around the world several times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton, and covered every economic summit. In February 1972, she was the only newspaperwoman to travel with President Nixon to China during his breakthrough trip.

Thomas has a history of firsts in her long career as a woman working in journalism. Thomas served as president of the Women’s National Press Club in 1959-60, and she was the first woman officer of the National Press Club after it opened its doors to women members for the first time in 90 years. In addition, Thomas became the first woman officer of the White House Correspondents Association in its 50 years of existence, and served as its first woman president in 1975-76. Thomas also became the first woman member of the Gridiron Club in its history, and the first woman to be elected president in 1993.

Thomas is also the author of “Dateline: White House;” her memoir, “Front Row at the White House;” and “Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President.”

Karen Elliott House

Karen Elliott House, senior vice president of Dow Jones & Company and former publisher of all print editions of The Wall Street Journal,has been named the 2006 winner of the prestigious International Matrix Award.

Prior to being appointed to her current position in July 2002, House served as president of the Dow Jones’ international group since January 1995. She was responsible for the business and editorial staffs of all Dow Jones overseas publications and services, international sales operations, overseas investments and publishing partnerships. She continues to have oversight responsibility for Dow Jones of CNBC Europe and CNBC Asia Pacific, a business television partnership of Dow Jones and NBC Universal.

House began her journalism career at the Dallas Morning News. In 1974, she joined the Journal’s Washington, D.C., bureau where she covered energy, environment and agriculture. She was named diplomatic correspondent in 1978, moved to New York in 1983 as assistant foreign editor and became foreign editor in 1984. In March 1989, she was named vice president of Dow Jones’ international group.

In 1984, House received a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for her coverage of the Middle East. Other journalism awards include: the Overseas Press Club’s Bob Considine Award for best daily newspaper interpretation of foreign affairs (1984 and 1988); the University of Southern California’s Distinguished Achievement in Journalism Award (1983); the National Press Club’s Edwin M. Hood Award for Excellence in Diplomatic Reporting for a series on Saudi Arabia (1982); and Georgetown University’s Edward Weintal Award for distinguished coverage of American foreign policy (1980).

House is a director of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. She is a trustee of Boston University, and a member of the board of trustees of RAND. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a former trustee of The Asia Society and a former member of the advisory council for the College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin.

A native of Matador, Texas, House received a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was managing editor of the student newspaper. In 1992, she received a UT-Austin distinguished alumnus award and the university’s College of Communication named her outstanding alumnus in 1996. She was awarded honorary degrees by Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., in 1992 and Boston University in 2003.

Gloria Brown Anderson

Gloria Brown Anderson, the vice president of international and editorial development, News Services Division for The New York Times, is the 2005 winner of the prestigious International Matrix Award.

Anderson has served in many capacities in the news business. She was a reporter for the Associated Press; editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer Sunday Magazine; features and Sunday editor of the Charlotte Observer; managing editor of the Knight News Wire and the Miami News; founding editor of Miami Today; and editor and publisher of the Kendall Gazette. At The New York Times, she has served as desk editor for The Week in Review, and as executive editor, editor-in-chief and president for the Syndication Sales Corp.

Anderson was born in Lubbock, Texas, the youngest of six children born in a farm family. She began journalism in junior high. “It was fate: I had to choose an elective: choir (I can’t sing), art (I can’t draw) or journalism,” she said.

She continued in journalism in high school. She then worked for the Lubbock paper, the Avalanche-Journal, as an intern until she got a telegram in the newsroom announcing she won a General Electric College Bowl Essay Contest. The award included a $6,000 scholarship (tuition at state schools then was $50 a semester), trip to New York and an appearance on the General Electric College Bowl TV program.

With the GE prize in hand, she headed to the University of Texas. “There I worked on The Daily Texan, where I covered a space shot, a barbecue at the LBJ Ranch and countless campus stories,” she said. Gloria became a campus correspondent for Time Magazine.

Upon graduation, a professor directed her to the University of Wisconsin graduate school, where she was in the Russell Sage program. “A version of my master’s thesis, on how police were using vagrancy statues to control hippies, was published by The Christian Science Monitor.”

During graduate school, she began working for the Associated Press, covering the state legislature. “That experience led to my first real job in journalism after I got my master’s degree, as what was then called a ‘newsman.’”

Mary Lou Quinlan

Mary Lou Quinlan,was named the 2004 winner of the prestigious International Matrix Award.

Women tell Mary Lou Quinlan things that they wouldn’t tell other people. In fact, in the last four years, over 4,000 female consumers have confided in Mary Lou in such a personal way, that the Wall Street Journal named her “the Oprah of Madison Avenue.”

As founder of strategic marketing company Just Ask a Woman, Mary Lou has advised dozens of clients including General Motors, CitiGroup, Johnson & Johnson, Toys R Us and Lifetime Television to help them gain women’s attention and loyalty.

During her 25-year career, Mary Lou held the positions of director of sales motivation and advertising for Avon Products, senior executive at major advertising agencies and then CEO of New York agency N.W. Ayer & Partners. She has earned many awards, including Woman of the Year from Advertising Women of New York in 1995 and the 1997 Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications.

Mary Lou has been published in Fast Company, Marie Claire, MORE and Good Housekeeping and has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall St. Journal, Business Week, and on CNBC, CNN and National Public Radio. She delivers weekly advice on “What Women Want” for the nationally syndicated radio program “The Advertising Show,” and she is the author of the book “Just Ask a Woman, Cracking the Code of What Women Want and How They Buy.”

Judy Woodruff

Judy Woodruff,was named the 2003 winner of the prestigious International Matrix Award.

Woodruff, a 30-year veteran of broadcast journalism who joined CNN in 1993, is CNN’s prime anchor and senior correspondent. She anchors Judy Woodruff’s Inside Politics, the nation’s first program devoted exclusively to politics, as well as CNN news coverage weekdays.

Woodruff helped anchor the network’s coverage of the February 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, interviewing experts and former astronauts about the risks and benefits of space exploration. Later in the year, Woodruff helped anchor the network’s coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom. She provided the latest reports and updates from the frontlines as well as from Central Command in Qatar, and Washington, D.C.

Following the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Woodruff provided award-winning continuous coverage from Washington, D.C., updating CNN viewers with the latest information and communicating with correspondents in the field.

In addition to her daily reporting duties, Woodruff reports on breaking political news stories and co-anchors CNN’s special coverage of political events such as debates and major presidential speeches. In April 2003, Woodruff moderated the first debate between the 2004 democratic presidential candidates, sponsored by the Childrens Defense Fund. Woodruff led the network’s breaking news coverage of the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., which occurred just weeks before the 2002 election. For CNN’s Election 2000 coverage, she moderated the Phoenix Republican presidential debate that CNN aired in November 1999, the CNN and WMUR-TV/Imes Communications Republican presidential town hall meeting at Dartmouth College in October 1999, the CNN/WMUR-TV Republican presidential debate in January 2000 and the CNN/Los Angeles Times Republican presidential debate in March 2000.

In September 1995, she traveled to Beijing to cover the U.N. World Conference on Women. She moderated CNNs first two “Global Forums,” international town meetings with former President Bill Clinton in 1994 and former President Jimmy Carter in 1995. She also anchored CNN’s coverage of former President Richard Nixon’s funeral.

She has covered politics and campaigns for most of her career. Woodruff moderated the 1988 vice presidential debate and has reported on every national political convention and presidential campaign since 1976. Before joining CNN, Woodruff was the chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984-1990, she anchored public television’s award-winning weekly documentary series Frontline with Judy Woodruff.

Before joining the NewsHour, Woodruff was chief Washington, D.C., correspondent for NBC’s Today. She also served as NBC News’ White House correspondent from 1977-1982, covering both the Carter and Reagan administrations. Woodruff joined NBC News as a general assignment reporter based in Atlanta in 1975. From 1970-1974, she was a correspondent for WAGA-TV, the CBS affiliate in Atlanta, where she reported on the state Legislature for five years and anchored the noon and evening news. Her book, This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley, documents her experiences as a journalist.

In February 2003, Woodruff was inducted into the Georgia Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. The following month, the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation honored her with the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award. In 1994, Woodruff became the first recipient of the National Women’s Hall of Fame President’s 21st Century Award. That same year, she and her husband were named “Washingtonians of the Year” by Washingtonian magazine for their fundraising work to fight spina bifida. And in 1986, for Woodruff’s series on national defense issues, the NewsHour was awarded the first Joan Shorenstein Barone Prize by the Washington Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association.

Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustee of the Freedom Forum, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Urban Institute.

Woodruff earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University, where she is a trustee emerita.

Linda C. Haneborg

Linda C. Haneborg, International Vice President of Marketing/ Communications for Express Personnel Services, oversees responsibilities that include corporate communications, advertising, public relations, marketing services, special events and media relations for over 400 Express offices worldwide. She also serves as corporate spokesperson, and has achieved her Certified Franchise Executive designation from the International Franchise Association (IFA). Under Linda’s direction, Express Personnel Services has received over 500 communications and marketing awards. She is also a sought-after speaker on crisis communications, franchising and public relations issues.

Active in numerous national professional organizations, including the International Women’s Forum (IWF) and the White House Women’s Information Network, Linda was one of only 40 women internationally who were invited to a women’s issues conference sponsored by the Harvard School of Business at the White House in 2000 last April.

Linda has long been involved in her local community, including serving as past president and board member of the Oklahoma City Chapter for the Association for Women in Communications (AWC). In 1999, she received the national Association for Women in Communications’ Headliner award. Linda has also received the local Oklahoma City AWC chapter’s Byliner Award, in the communications category. Linda Haneborg is a fine example of a dedicated communications professional and we are honored to present her 2002 AWC International Matrix Award.

Gail Evans

Gail Evans is executive vice president of Domestic Networks for the CNN News Group, named to this position in September 2000. In this capacity, Evans—working closely with Sid Bedingfield, executive vice president and general manager of CNN/U.S., and the heads of all other domestic networks—is in charge of program and talent development. She oversees network talk shows and the Network Guest Bookings Department, which schedules about 25,000 guests each year. Evans is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta and reports to Jim Walton, president of Domestic Networks for the CNN News Group. She is a member of CNN Executive Committee and is past chairperson of the CNN programming task force.

In addition, Evans has developed three of CNN’s most popular programs-TalkBack Live, television’s first interactive, live talk show; Burden of Proof, the first daily legal talk show on network television; and CNN & Company, the news talk show featuring a panel of female experts debating the top stories of the day. Evans has been with the network since its inception in 1980.

Evans began her career in the early 1960s, working on a number of congressional staffs.

She worked at the White House in the office of the Special Counsel to the President during the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration and was instrumental in the creation of the president’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. During the late 1960s, Evans lived in Moscow with her husband, who was then Moscow bureau chief for CBS News. After returning to the United States in 1970, she was a founding partner of Global Research Services, an Atlanta-based research and marketing firm.

Evans is active in numerous Atlanta and Georgia charities and served for two years as the chairperson of the Georgia Endowment for the Humanities. In 1979, she was nominated to Leadership Atlanta and in 1993, she became a trustee of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation.

In 1997, Evans was appointed to the President’s Commission on White House Fellows, a position she continues to hold. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at Kennesaw State University and has served as an adjunct professor at Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, teaching a course on gender issues in the workplace. She serves as a member of the Board of Visitors at the Georgia State University School of Law and has been a member of the Citizens Review Panel of the Juvenile Court of Atlanta. Evans also is an active member of the Committee 200, The International Women’s Forum. In 1995, she was named to the YWCA’s Academy of Women Achievers. Evans’ best selling book, “Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman,” was published in April 2000.

Evans holds a bachelor’s degree from Bennington College in Vermont.

Diane Rehm

For more than 20 years, The Diane Rehm Show has offered listeners the opportunity to hear and participate in a thoughtful and lively dialogue on an enormous array of topics with many of the most distinguished people of our times. The program has been described by Newsweek as one of the most interesting talk shows in the country and by the National Journal as “the class act of the talk radio world.” It is broadcast live each weekday from 10 a.m. until noon EST on WAMU 88.5 FM. The program has been nationally syndicated since May 1995 and now is distributed by National Public Radio to stations across the nation. Since January 1996, it has been available to direct broadcast satellite subscribers throughout Europe and Japan through NPR Worldwide. The program also is available to all U.S. military installations overseas via Armed Forces Radio.

Each week, The Diane Rehm Show is heard by more than 800,000 listeners across the country, including many of the nation’s top policymakers and journalists. A representative sample of guests on the program includes Vice President Al Gore, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator John McCain, General Colin Powell, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, novelists John Grisham and Nadine Gordimer, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, Irish President Mary McAleese, actress Lauren Bacall, author Mario Vargas Llosa, choreographer Twyla Tharp and poet Maya Angelou.

The Diane Rehm Show and its host have earned considerable recognition over the years. Their most recent awards include The Andrew White Medal from Loyola College and the Advocacy Awareness Award from The League for People with Disabilities, both received in 2000. During 1999, Rehm was named a Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine, and the program received a bronze medal at The New York Festivals International Radio Award competition and two Gracie Allen Awards from American Women in Radio and Television, Inc.

Diane Rehm is a native Washingtonian who began her radio career in 1973 as an assistant producer for talk shows at WAMU. She became host and producer of two health-oriented programs, Mind and Body and Health Call. In 1979, Rehm was selected as host of WAMU’s morning talk show, Kaleidoscope, which was renamed The Diane Rehm Show in 1984. In 1991 she anchored Nightwatch on CBS.

A significant landmark in Rehm’s life and career occurred in June 1998, when she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition which had caused her speech to become strained and difficult. She wrote several articles and produced a program about the little-known disorder and was awarded a Communication Award for her efforts by the National Council on Communicative Disorders and a Media Award from the Maryland Speech- Hearing- Language Association. ABC’s Nightline host Ted Koppel devoted an entire program to a discussion with Rehm about her illness. She receives periodic treatments with botulinum toxin which controls her condition and allows her to continue broadcasting.

Rehm’s childhood, marriage, career in broadcasting and vocal difficulties are the subject of her memoir, Finding My Voice, published by Knopf in 1999. The book has been listed on The Washington Post’s best-seller list and is now in its third printing.

Rehm is a member of the board of the PEN/Faulkner Award Foundation and is on the Western Maryland College (Westminster, Maryland) board of trustees.

Funding for national distribution of The Diane Rehm Show is provided by Doubleday, the Milken Family Foundation, the Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc., Knopf, the Patricia D. Cornwell Foundation, Larry King and the law firm of Dorsey and Whitney, as well as several individual contributors.

WAMU serves 457,000 listeners each week in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia with news and public affairs programming, as well as bluegrass and other traditional music. The member-supported public radio station is licensed to American University.

Ellen Goodman

Goodman’s insight, common sense and verbal flair have attracted a fervent national following since 1976, when her Boston Globe column was first syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Today, her column appears on op-ed pages in over 440 newspapers across the country. Goodman has been with the Boston Globe, where she is an associate editor as well as a columnist, since 1967. She was graduated from Radcliffe College, cum laude, in 1963, and spent 1973-1974 at Harvard as a Nieman Fellow. In 1980, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary. AWC is pleased to honor her with the International Matrix Award, which she accepted at the Jully 22 Matrix/Clarion Awards Dinner.

Jane Pauley

Arnold, MD – The Association for Women in Communications honored veteran broadcast journalist Jane Pauley last week with its 1998 Matrix Award. Pauley accepted the award at the AWC professional conference, “Revolutions in Communications,” in Philadelphia, July 30.

AWC bestows this honor on a communications professional for achieving the highest level of professional excellence.

A principal anchor of the Emmy-winning “Dateline NBC,” Jane Pauley has presented probing and compassionate interviews to American viewers throughout her career at NBC News. The former co-anchor of “Today,” Pauley had a successful run as anchor of NBC’s “Real Life with Jane Pauley” following her dramatic departure from “Today” in 1989. Currently she anchors four editions of the popular “Dateline,” as well as “Time and Again” an acclaimed retrospective program televised on the MSNBC cable channel.

“Her steadfast professionalism as a newswoman, coupled with the civic consciousness she maintains as a public figure, made Jane Pauley the clear choice for this year’s Matrix Award, said AWC Chair Lucy Harr.

Pauley works tirelessly as an advocate for young people on health and education issues, Harr said. She serves on the advisory boards of the Children’s Health Fund, Freedom from Hunger, and PENCIL (Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning).

A fellow with the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ), she is honorary chair of SPJ’s Jane Pauley Task Force on Mass Communications Education. Composed of broadcast executives and educators, the task force has issued recommendations Pauley hopes will stimulate needed change and innovation to ensure the future of broadcast journalism.

Pauley’s distinctive career has been populated with kudos and honorary degrees, including those from Notre Dame and DePauw Universities and her alma mater, Indiana University. She began her career in her home town of Indianapolis in 1972, broadcasting at WISH-TV. Before joining “Today,”she was co-anchor of the evening news on WMAQ-TV, the NBC station in Chicago, where, at 24, she was the first woman to co-anchor a weeknight news program. Presently, she lives in New York with her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau. They have three children.