Cynthia McFadden is an icon of ethics and principle in a television world gone mad with "reality" and "celebrity" trivia. She is a triple-threat -- producer, writer and reporter of her own work at ABC where she co-anchors the network's "Nightline" and "Primetime."

McFadden burst on the scene as a young producer for TV legend Fred W. Friendly, the celebrated man who made the Edward R. Murrow days at CBS so effective and important. Over six years, Cynthia and Fred produced more than 40 prime-time programs for public TV on topics from the American presidency to ethics and terrorism. Their panelists were the nation's biggest, most famous and infamous names.

In 1991, Steve Brill lured her to his new Courtroom TV Network. She was both senior producer and anchor. She anchored five hours of live courtroom coverage daily, covering more than 200 trials. In 1994, she made the leap to network news, covering the O.J. Simpson trial for ABC.

She has won nearly every major award in broadcast news including a George Foster Peabody, a duPont, the Foreign Press Club and an Emmy. Interviewing world leaders – President Musharraf of Pakistan, Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; she includes Bono, Paul Newman, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Cher, George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Clint Eastwood in her repertoire. She has sat down with most of the 2008 presidential candidates including five in-depth interviews with Senator Hillary Clinton.

McFadden's documentary work is about those whose voices may not be heard. She has done groundbreaking work with children raised in poverty by their grandmothers, girl gangsters in Los Angeles, prostitutes in San Francisco and the last days of a death row inmate in Louisiana. Her award-winning investigations into human rights abuses, focusing on women and children, have had her reporting from India on children in the sex trade, in Mexico on a mental hospital, on sex slavery in Israel, as well as from China, Rwanda, Bosnia, South Africa and El Salvador.

Born in Maine, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from Bowdoin College, receiving a law degree from Columbia. A Vanity Fair profile noted McFadden was "more L.L. Bean than Geoffrey Beene" – a sentiment she cherishes.