Jane Pauley

As one of broadcasting's most respected journalists for more than 30 years, Jane Pauley’s career spans morning, daytime, and primetime television making her one of the most recognizable personalities in America.

A member of the Broadcast and Cable Hall of Fame, Ms. Pauley has been honored with multiple Emmys and other awards, including the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Edward R Murrow Award for outstanding achievement, the Radio and Television News Directors Association’s Paul White Award for lifetime contribution to electronic journalism, the Gracie Allen Award Outstanding Achievement by American Women in Radio & Television and the first international Matrix Award from the Association for Women in Communication.

Pauley began her journalism career in her hometown of Indianapolis in 1972. In 1975, she joined NBC and at the age of 24 became the first woman to co-anchor a weeknight evening newscast at WMAQ in Chicago. Barely a year later, she was named co-host of The Today Show and began her 13-year tenure. First teamed with Tom Brokaw and then Bryant Gumbel, she interviewed thousands of newsmakers in locations around the world, including London for the weddings of Prince Charles and Prince Andrew, Rome where Today televised its audience with Pope John Paul II, and the Great Wall of China.

After many years in morning television, Pauley switched to primetime, anchoring the Sunday edition of NBC Nightly News as well as Real Life with Jane Pauley, Time and Again, the retrospective news program on MSNBC, and a highly successful 11-year run with NBC’s top-rated award-winning magazine show, Dateline. She ended her run with a primetime special, Jane Pauley: Signing Off. The special attracted record ratings for the network. Pauley returned to daytime television in 2004 as host of The Jane Pauley Show.

Partnering with AARP, Ms. Pauley is currently contributing to NBC’s Today Show in a new monthly series, Your Life Calling with Jane Pauley, which will feature people over 50 who have reinvented the way they work and/or live to pursue their life's calling. In 2009, in her first collaboration with AARP, Ms. Pauley earned a public affairs Gracie for Picking up the Pieces, a TV special about the families of soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March 2010, Ms. Pauley was named AARP's “Your Life Calling” Ambassador.

Ms. Pauley is a highly regarded advocate for mental health, children’s health, and education issues.

In her memoir, the New York Times bestseller Skywriting: a Life out of the Blue, Pauley wrote candidly about being diagnosed with mental illness at the age of 50, after medical treatment for hives triggered a previously unrecognized vulnerability to bipolar depression. Pauley is a member of the Leadership Board of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

Ms. Pauley is a former member of the advisory board of Pencil, an organization which fosters civic involvement in public education. She is also a member of the advisory board of the International Council of Freedom from Hunger, and chairman of the advisory board of The Children’s Health Fund.

Ms. Pauley is a former trustee of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation, and a Fellow of the Society for Professional Journalists under whose auspices she funded the Pauley Task Force on Mass Communication Education, a comprehensive assessment of college journalism curriculums.

A graduate of Indiana University, Pauley has been married for 27 years to Doonesbury cartoonist, Garry Trudeau. They have three children and reside in New York City.