DIANE SAWYER

Legendary broadcast journalist

One of the most recognizable interviewers and broadcast journalists, Diane Sawyer has represented the largest media companies in the nation and covered some of the most influential cultural, economic and political moments in the last fifty years.

Born in Glasgow, Kentucky, Sawyer’s family relocated to Louisville soon after her birth. Her mother was an elementary school teacher and her father was the County Judge before his tragic early death from a car accident. She attended Seneca High School, where she was encouraged to pursue her academic and intellectual interests.

After excelling in her high school studies, she went on to major in English at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. After college  she returned to Louisville, and became a weather forecaster for local news station, WLKY. Finding the work unfulfilling, she relocated to Washington, D.C. to pursue more consequential political journalism. Without having much luck in her job search, she ended up working in a communications position for Richard Nixon’s White House. She would develop a unique relationship with the president during and after his resignation stemming from the Watergate scandal. 

Sawyer left Washington to help Nixon write his memoir in California. After completing that project she returned to Washington D.C. to work at CBS News. Starting as a general field reporter, she was soon promoted as a political correspondent. She was met with widespread enthusiasm for her honest and direct reporting and went on to become the first woman correspondent on CBS’ hallmark program 60 Minutes. 

In the late 1980s, she left CBS to co-anchor ABC News’ Primetime Live. Serving in that role for nine years, she covered much of the Clinton administration and many pop cultural moments. Her move to Good Morning America in 1999 would prove tremendously consequential, considering the newsworthy events she would cover. It was in this role just two years later that she would cover in real-time the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 

Working on GMA for nearly 9 years, she then anchored ABC World News from 2009 to 2014. She continues to work with ABC in creating and producing documentary specials that periodically air on the network.