Gwen Ifill

Gwendolyn L. Ifill was an American journalist, television newscaster, and author. In 1999, she became the first African-American woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program with Washington Week in Review. She was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor, with Judy Woodruff, of the PBS NewsHour, both of which air on PBS. Ifill was a political analyst and moderated the 2004 and 2008 vice-presidential debates. 

She authored the best-selling book The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Gwendolyn L. Ifill was born in Jamaica, Queens in New York City. She was the fifth of six children of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister (Oliver) Urcille Ifill Sr., a Panamanian of Barbadian descent who emigrated from Panama, and Eleanor Ifill, who was from Barbados. Her father's ministry required the family to live in several cities in New England and on the Eastern Seaboard during her youth, where he pastored AME churches.

As a child, she lived in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts church parsonages and in federally subsidized housing in Buffalo and New York City. Ifill graduated from Springfield Central High School (then Classical High School) in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1973. She graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Simmons College, a women's college in Boston. While at Simmons College, Ifill interned for the Boston Herald-American. 

One day at work, she discovered a note on her desk that read, "Nigger go home." After showing the note to editors at the newspaper, who "were horrified," they offered her a job when she graduated from college in 1977. Ifill's close friend Michele Norris stated that Ifill said, "'That was really unfortunate, but I have work to do.' And that's how she got the job. She didn't get the job out of sympathy. She got the job because she didn't let that slow her down."

Ifill went on to work for the Baltimore Evening Sun from 1981 to 1984 and for The Washington Post from 1984 to 1991. She left the Post after being told she was not ready to cover Capitol Hill, but was hired by The New York Times, where she covered the White House from 1991 to 1994. Her first job in television was with NBC, where she was the network's Capitol Hill reporter in 1994.

In October 1999, she became the moderator of the PBS program Washington Week in Review, the first black woman to host a national political talk show on television. She was a senior correspondent for PBS NewsHour. Ifill appeared on various news shows, including Meet the Press, Face the Nation, Charlie Rose, Inside Washington, and The Tavis Smiley Show. In November 2006, she co-hosted Jamestown Live!, an educational webcast commemorating the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Virginia.

Ifill served on the boards of the Harvard Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Museum of Television and Radio, and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. In 2017, the Committee to Protect Journalists renamed the Burton Benjamin Memorial Award, which started in 1991, to Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. The award has since been given to Judy Woodruff in 2017, Maria Ressa in 2018, Zaffar Abbas in 2019, Amal Clooney in 2020 and Jimmy Lai in 2021.