Diane Sawyer's Biography

Sawyer kicked off her tenure at "World News" in December 2009 by traveling to Copenhagen where she confronted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about Iran's nuclear ambitions. In January 2010, Sawyer reported the latest installment of "Afghanistan: Where Things Stand." She travelled with General Stanley McChrystal as he surveyed the battlefield and sat down with Afghan President Hamid Karzai for his first interview after his highly contested reelection. From Afghanistan, Sawyer traveled to Haiti to cover the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.

During the historic 2008 presidential election, Ms. Sawyer co-anchored ABC News' coverage of the political conventions, Election Night, and the Inauguration. Over the course of the campaign, she conducted wide-ranging interviews with the candidates and also reported "Portrait of a President," two hour-long specials that revealed new insight into Barack Obama, John McCain and their families.

In June 2009, Ms. Sawyer, along with Charles Gibson, moderated "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," a conversation with President Obama about healthcare reform at the White House.

Through her distinguished documentary work, Ms. Sawyer has tackled challenging issues in primetime. In 2006, her report on the crises in the foster care system was recognized with the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. In December 2011, after a year-long investigation, Sawyer aired another startling report on the overmedication of children in the foster care system. In January 2007, Ms. Sawyer delivered an eye-opening report on poverty in America, "Waiting on the World to Change," which gave viewers insight into the lives of families in Camden, New Jersey – the poorest city in America. Ms. Sawyer and her team of producers spent two years in the hills of Appalachia reporting the February 2009 special "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains," which won a Peabody Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. In 2011, Sawyer continued her in-depth reporting on poverty in America focusing on the American Indian population with "A Hidden America: Children of the Plains."

Ms. Sawyer's other primetime documentaries include: an investigation into the warehousing of Russian children in state-run orphanages; a diary of life inside a women's maximum security prison where she spent two days and nights with inmates; an investigation into the neglect and abuse at state-run institutions for the mentally handicapped; and a landmark investigation into pharmacy prescription errors.

In October 2006, Ms. Sawyer traveled to North Korea and brought viewers an unprecedented look inside that secretive country. The first American journalist to ever report live from North Korea, Ms. Sawyer also anchored "North Korea: Inside The Shadows," an hour-long primetime special that included interviews with key government and military officials and new information on what life is like for North Koreans.

In February of 2007, Ms. Sawyer traveled to Syria and Iran, where she had conducted exclusive interviews with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In April 2008, Ms. Sawyer anchored "Good Morning America" from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.