SHRM 2013 Employment Law and Legislative Conference

Candy Crowley is CNN's award-winning chief political correspondent and anchor of State of the Union with Candy Crowley, a political hour of newsmaker interviews and analysis of the week’s most important issues. Crowley took the reins of State of the Union in February 2010. In her role as chief political correspondent, Crowley covers a broad range of stories, including presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races and major legislative developments on Capitol Hill. 

Crowley’s assignments have taken her to all 50 states and around the world.  As a member of the Peabody Award-winning “Best Political Team on Television,” she played a pivotal role in CNN’s America Votes 2008 coverage, traveling to both conventions, every debate and additional stops along the campaign trail. Crowley earned a prestigious Gracie Allen Award in 2009 for coverage of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the White House. She also was part of the network’s Emmy Award-winning 2006 midterm election coverage.

She has covered the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Howard Dean, Bob Dole, Jesse Jackson, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, among others. Since the presidential nomination of Jimmy Carter, she has covered all but one of the national political conventions. She was also granted an exclusive sit-down interview with President George W. Bush days before he left office.

Among her most vivid memories as a reporter, Crowley counts the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast; the impeachment trial of President Clinton; Election Night 2000; ceremonies marking the 40th anniversary of D-Day on the beaches of Normandy; Ronald Reagan’s trips to China, Bitburg and Bergen-Belsen; the night the United States bombed Libya; and the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

Crowley began her broadcast journalism career in Washington, D.C., as a newsroom assistant for Metromedia radio station WASH.  She has served as an anchor for Mutual Broadcasting and as a general assignment and White House correspondent for the Associated Press, where she covered most of the Reagan era before moving on to NBC-TV to become a general assignment correspondent in NBC’s Washington bureau. She came to CNN from NBC News in 1987.

Prior to her current role, Crowley served as a congressional correspondent for the network.  

In 2005, Crowley was honored with the Edward R. Murrow award and the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for excellence in journalism for her reporting on the 2004 presidential election.  In 2004, Crowley won the Gracie Allen Award in the “National News Story-Series” category for “War Stories” and a National Headliner and a Cine award for CNN Presents: Fit to Kill.  In 2003, Crowley won an Emmy for her work on CNN Presents Enemy Within.  She won the 1999 DuPont-Columbia University Silver Baton Award for her coverage of the impeachment and trial of President Bill Clinton.  She won the 2003 and 1998 Dirksen Awards for distinguished reporting on Congress from the National Press Foundation and the 1997 Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for her coverage of Bob Dole’s campaign for the presidency.  She received the Associated Press Broadcasters’ Award for spot news reporting for her coverage of the Reagan campaign, as well as the AP Award for in-depth coverage of the 1980 Reagan campaign.  Her reporting on more than a dozen 1992 U.S. Senate campaigns was runner-up for the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award for Outstanding Journalism.  Crowley also won the Columbia University’s Armstrong Award for Freedom is My Woman, a documentary on a prison cellblock takeover.          

Crowley earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and contributing editor at TIME, Jon Meacham is one of America's most prominent public intellectuals. Known as a skilled raconteur and an accomplished historian with a depth of knowledge about politics, religion, and current affairs, he understands and analyzes how issues and events impact modern life.

Meacham’s latest presidential biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, will be published in November 2012. Walter Isaacson lauded Meacham, calling the book “A true triumph. In addition to being a brilliant biography, Thomas Jefferson is a guide to the art of power…a fascinating look at how Jefferson wielded his driving desire for power and control.”

His New York Times bestseller, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. Meacham used the seventh president's unpublished correspondence and other sources to create "an unflinching portrait of a not always admirable democrat but a pivotal president, written with an agile prose that brings the Jackson saga to life.”

His other New York Times bestsellers include Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, which explored the fascinating relationship between the two great leaders who piloted the free world to victory in World War II, and American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation.

Executive Vice President and Executive Editor at the Random House Publishing Group, Meacham is editing the PoliticoInside Election 2012 e-book series and a book by Al Gore. He is also at work on a biography of President George H.W. Bush.

Starting his career at Newsweek in 1995, Meacham served as the magazine’s managing editor from 1998 to 2006 and editor from 2006 to 2010. The New York Times called him “one of the most influential editors in the news magazine business." Now a contributing editor at TIME, he writes for the magazine’s Ideas section.

Named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Society of American Historians. He is a regular guest on Morning Joe and has appeared on Meet The Press and The Colbert Report. He presents his “In Perspective” essays and conducts interviews on PBS' weekly public affairs program, Need To Know.