Matt Gutman is ABC News’ Chief National Correspondent. He reports for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including “World News Tonight with David Muir,” “20/20,” “Good Morning America” and “Nightline.” He has reported from six continents and over 60 countries during his 24 years in journalism.
Gutman, a recipient of the Emmy, Murrow, DuPont, Gracie, and NABJ awards, has spent much of the past year (and the first seven years of his career) in Israel and Gaza reporting on the conflict in the Middle East.
When Gutman graduated Williams College in 2000, and then took the LSATs, he had an immediate realization – he was not going to be a lawyer. Pretty quickly he established two life goals: to be a collector of experience, whatever form it took, and to have someone else pay it.
He traveled in Latin America, where his first published articles appeared in the Buenos Aires Herald, for which he was paid $40 per story. Turned out his habit of talking to strangers was a journalistic superpower. As a Middle East- based print reporter in the early 2000’s, he covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and met countless people along the way – like the shepherd outside of Mosul, Iraq who informed him that Iraq’s former dictator, Saddam Hussein had been caught. (How’d the shepherd find out? His hut was hooked up with satellite TV.)
Gutman has covered many of the biggest national stories over the past 15 years. His original reporting on the murder of Trayvon Martin helped turn it into a national story, and was honored by the National Association of Black Journalists. Gutman’s reporting from Thailand on the mission to save the Thai soccer team from the depths of a flooded cave in 2018 also won awards, and became the basis of his book “The Boys in the Cave.”
His second book, “No Time To Panic,” chronicled his 20-year battle with panic attacks, and his long journey to wellness through talking with strangers, lessons from evolutionary psychology and psychedelics.
From 2013-2018 he hosted the ABC Television Network’s Saturday morning show, “Sea Rescue,” which won the 2016 Emmy for “Outstanding Children’s Series.”
Gutman lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two kids, two dogs and a cat.
Lee Woodruff knows that life can change in an instant. One minute, you’re a successful freelance writer and businesswoman, mother of four children and wife of Bob Woodruff, the newly appointed co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. The next minute, your life turns upside down when your husband is severely wounded in a roadside bomb attack in Iraq.
Showing immense courage, Woodruff held her family together and became the epitome of resilience. She provided the extra support her children needed, as well as the moral and physical support to her husband during his slow, painstaking recovery. Gaining strength from their own incredible ordeal, Lee and her husband made the decision to help others, founding the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury, which has helped to raise more than $70 million to help military veterans, caregivers and their families successfully reintegrate into their communities and receive critical long-term care. Now a best-selling author, Woodruff shares her personal story with audiences, providing them with the wisdom and inspiration she learned along her remarkable, and often difficult, journey.
With her down to earth, compassionate style, Woodruff has penned multiple best-selling books. She and Bob wrote a compelling account of their story titled “In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing.” In another best-selling book, “Perfectly Imperfect – A Life in Progress,” Woodruff tackles the universal topics of life – including family, friends and marriage – with heart and humor. Furthermore, her first novel, “Those We Love Most,” became a New York Times bestseller and won the Washington Irving Book Award.
As a journalist, Lee Woodruff has spent her career in the media and marketing world. A contributor for CBS This Morning, she has also reported for Good Morning America and hosted various radio shows. Woodruff has penned numerous magazine articles on a variety of business and feature subjects and she runs a successful media training consulting business in New York. As a media and presentation coach for the past 25 plus years, Lee has worked with C-suite executives, celebrities, young "up-and-coming" executives, philanthropists and many others to help them polish their communications skills and crisp up their messaging and story-telling.
Over the past decade Charlese Antoinette has established herself as one of the most talented costume designers in the business. Her personal fashion influences range from 1969, the afro-futurism of the '70s and Gianni Versace’s '90s to her passion for travel and exploring new worlds in creating groundbreaking, vibrant contemporary and period costumes.
Charlese graduated from Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson University) in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science in fashion merchandising. Her work was recently showcased in the Ben Affleck/Matt Damon-produced drama AIR chronicling the launch of Nike, a fledgling sport shoe company that would become an internationally successful sports empire. Previously she lent her talents to writer/director Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, starring Anna Diop, Sinqua Walls and Michelle Monaghan, which premiered at Sundance 2022 and received the U.S. Grand Jury Prize. Her most notable costume design work can be seen in the critically acclaimed, Oscar®-nominated Judas and the Black Messiah, starring Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield and Dominique Fishback, for which Charlese received a 2021 Costume Designers Guild Award nomination. The film was nominated for over 80 awards worldwide.
Over the last 10 years Charlese has costume designed over 10 films, among them, the Spike Lee-produced See You Yesterday, Vincent N Roxxy and Little Boxes, all of which premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Additional films include George Tillman’s The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete and writer/director Shaka King’s Newlyweeds, both of which premiered at Sundance in 2013, and earned King a Film Independent Spirit Award.
Her stunning work can also be seen on the small screen in the second season of Terence Nance’s Peabody Award-winning Random Acts of Flyness for HBO, as well as Kenya Barris’s original sketch comedy Astronomy Club and the internationally lauded Raising Dion, both from Netflix.
In 2019 Charlese launched the Black Designer Database with a mission to support Black designers through the amplification of their work while connecting them with consumers as well as media opportunities. That same year she also founded a fashion design program called DESIGN YOU! in partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Northeast Ohio.
Charlese became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Costume Branch in 2021.
Charlese has a new exciting chapter ahead as a Creative Executive at Ben Affleck/ Matt Damon’s newly launched company Artists Equity, where she will be developing and producing scripted and unscripted film/TV. She also just wrapped her second film with Matt Damon, a heist comedy titled Instigators, starring Casey Affleck, Hong Chau, Ron Perlman and Ving Rhames, directed by Doug Liman.
Dr. Cheryl Bettigole served as the Health Commissioner for the City of Philadelphia from 2021-2024, overseeing the development of a five-year strategic plan that included centering equity in Health Department work, improving access to primary care, and preparing for future public health emergencies.
Dr. Bettigole led the department’s efforts to respond to multiple mass displaced person events, including Afghan and Ukrainian evacuees and migrants bussed from the southern border, collaborating with local, state, and federal partners to create new models of care for migrant populations. She worked with the Board of Health and the Air Pollution Control Board along with community members and community organizations to pass innovative public health policies including a groundbreaking air toxics regulation. The Health Department also renewed its accreditation through the Public Health Accreditation Board and Project Public Health Ready under her direction.
Dr. Bettigole is a board-certified family physician and previously served as the Director of the Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, as Chief Medical Officer of Complete Care Health Network, a federally qualified community/migrant health center in southern New Jersey, and as a Family Physician and Clinical Director with Philadelphia’s City Health Centers, where she saw patients for more than 12 years.
She is also a Past President of the National Physicians Alliance (now part of Doctors for America), where she helped develop physician teams focused on gun violence prevention and drug safety and pricing, while continuing the organization’s work on access to high-quality affordable health care.
Dr. Bettigole is a proud graduate of Jefferson Medical College and the Family Medicine residency program at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She holds a BA in History from Yale University, an MA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was awarded a Capstone Award for her work on the impact of in person interpretation on access to care for immigrants.
Dr. King served as president of Lorraine C. King MD, PC and Diagnostic Endocrine Associates. She was an active member of the medical staff at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, specializing in the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility. She is a fellow of the Philadelphia College of Physicians and clinical associate professor of OB/GYN in the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at Jefferson and has authored a number of scholarly articles in the specialty.
Dr. King has been active for many years in numerous professional organizations and committees, serving and chairing many hospital committees at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. She was president of the medical staff of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital from 2009-2011 and has served continuously on the Medical Executive Committee since 1997.
She served as president of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College Alumni Association from 2006-2008 and had been a member of the Executive Committee of the Alumni Association since 1991. Dr. King earned her BS from Temple University and her MD from the Medical College of Pennsylvania. She completed her internship and residency in OB/GYN and her fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at Jefferson.
David J. Skorton, MD, is president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which represents the nation’s medical schools, teaching hospitals and health systems, and academic societies.
Dr. Skorton began his leadership of the AAMC in July 2019 after a distinguished career in government, higher education and medicine. In his first year at the AAMC, he addressed social issues that affect health, guided the AAMC through a pandemic, and built a multi-year strategic plan to tackle the nation’s most intractable challenges in health and health care, working to make academic medicine more diverse, equitable and inclusive.
Dr. Skorton has contributed to the national response to the coronavirus pandemic through frequent interactions with senior government officials and appearances in national media. When national protests erupted over police brutality, Dr. Skorton was an outspoken voice for ending systemic racism in academic medicine and addressing persistent health disparities.
Previously, Dr. Skorton served as the 13th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, where he oversaw 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers and education programs. Prior to that, he served as president of two universities: Cornell University (2006 to 2015) and the University of Iowa (2003 to 2006), where he also served on the faculty for 26 years and specialized in the treatment of adolescents and adults with congenital heart disease.
A pioneer of cardiac imaging and computer processing techniques, he also was co-director and co-founder of the University of Iowa Adolescent and Adult Congenital Heart Disease Clinic.
A Distinguished Professor at Georgetown University, Dr. Skorton is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, as well as a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also served on the AAMC Board of Directors from 2010 to 2013, and he was the charter president of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs Inc., the first group organized specifically to accredit human research protection programs.
Throughout his career, Dr. Skorton has focused on issues of diversity and inclusion. A nationally recognized supporter of the arts and humanities, as well as an accomplished jazz musician and composer, Dr. Skorton believes that many of society’s thorniest problems can only be solved by combining the sciences, social sciences and the arts and humanities.
Dr. Skorton earned his BA and MD degrees from Northwestern University. He completed his medical residency and fellowship in cardiology and was chief medical resident at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is married to Robin Davisson, PhD, an award-winning scientist, who is a professor emerita of molecular physiology at Cornell University, as well as adjunct professor of medicine at Georgetown University. She is also an emerging visual artist.