PASADENA, Calif.- Television news journalist Judy Woodruff will be the featured guest at the 2006 DuBridge Distinguished Lecture Series at the California Institute of Technology from 8 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 14, in Beckman Auditorium on the Pasadena campus. The event is free and open to the public.
Woodruff, formerly of NBC and CNN, has been working most recently on a PBS documentary about young people and their thoughts on world events titled Generation Next: Speak Up, Be Heard. Woodruff also serves as a special correspondent on the News Hour on PBS, typically as a moderator for discussions on politics and economics.
From 1993 to 2005, Woodruff hosted Inside Politics on CNN. She hosted PBS's award-winning weekly documentary series Frontline from 1984 to 1990, and served as the chief White House correspondent for NBC from 1977 to 1982.
During the 1988 presidential campaign, Woodruff moderated the vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Lloyd Bentsen, during which Quayle compared his length of service in Congress to John Kennedy's and Bentsen retorted, "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."
Woodruff had her first taste of the limelight at age 17, when she won a hometown beauty pageant and was crowned Young Miss Augusta 1963. She attended Duke University, where she earned a degree in political science.
She gained political reporting experience working at an Atlanta CBS affiliate, WAGA-TV, reporting on the state legislature. She also anchored the noon and evening news. She then became a general assignment reporter for NBC News in Atlanta, where she reported on the presidential campaign of then-governor Jimmy Carter in 1976.
She has received numerous professional honors. CNN received the 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award in the Continuing Coverage category for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks, which Woodruff and Aaron Brown anchored. In 1997 she won the News and Documentary Emmy Award for outstanding instant coverage of a single breaking news story for CNN's coverage of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing. In 1996, Woodruff and Bernard Shaw won the CableACE Award for Best Anchor Team for their work on Inside Politics. In 1995, Woodruff won the CableACE for Best Newscaster. She has been honored for her fund-raising work to fight spina bifida. She is a founding cochair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide.
She is married to Al Hunt, formerly of CNN and the Wall Street Journal and now managing editor of the Bloomberg News Washington, D.C., bureau. They have three children and live in Washington.
She will be interviewed for the DuBridge Lecture by Colleen Williams, the coanchor of the award-winning 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekday editions of the Channel 4 News with Paul Moyer.
Williams joined NBC4 in August l986. Before that, she was the coanchor of the KCBS-TV weekday news broadcast Live At Five, a position she assumed in June 1985. She joined KCBS-TV in January l983 as weekend coanchor.
Williams was with KPIX-TV in San Francisco from l981 to 1983, where she anchored the noon and weekend news broadcasts. From l978 to 198l, she was with WOWT-TV in Omaha, Nebraska. In l977, Williams was a drive-time anchor and general assignment reporter for WOW Radio in Omaha.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including multiple Emmy and Golden Mike Awards. In 2002, she won an Emmy and a Golden Mike Award for her work on the KNBC news special LA Riots: Rubble to Rebirth and for 4th of July Shooting at LAX, which won in the category of Best Live Coverage of an Unscheduled Event.
Williams coanchored the live coverage of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games Centennial Park bombing. The NBC4 footage of the event was seen around the world and won a Golden Mike and an Associated Press Award for Best Live Coverage of a News Story.
In 1990 Williams met her husband, an Air Force major, while on assignment during the Persian Gulf War. They now reside with their son in Pasadena.
No tickets are necessary for the lecture; at least 500 seats will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.
The Lee A. DuBridge Distinguished Lecture series brings prominent speakers of national and international importance to the Caltech campus. The series was inaugurated in 1996 in honor of Lee A. DuBridge, president of Caltech from 1946 to 1969. DuBridge, who died in 1994, was once called America's "senior statesman of science" by Time magazine, and was considered an exemplary research-university president in an era of vast scientific, societal, and educational change. He guided the growth of the modern Caltech, while maintaining an understanding and interest in national affairs that was rare among university presidents. Previous DuBridge speakers include Walter Cronkite, Warren Buffett, John Hume, and Jack Valenti.
For more information on the lecture, call 626-395-4652 or, outside the greater Pasadena area, call toll free, 888-222-5832. ### Contact: Jill Perry (626) 395-3226 jperry@caltech.edu
Visit the Caltech Media Relations website at http://pr.caltech.edu/media.
Written by Jill Perry