Katharine Graham attended Vassar College and was graduated from the University of Chicago in 1938. She worked in the editorial and circulation departments of the Washington Post. Upon the death of her husband Philip Graham in 1963, she became owner of the newspaper and served as publisher from 1969 until 1979, and from 1973 until 1991 as Board Chair and CEO. In 1965, she hired Benjamin Bradlee as editor of the Washington Post and together they developed a staff of reporters and editors that moved the paper into the top ranks of American newspapers. Mrs. Graham remained Chair of the Board until her death in 2001.

Graham’s courageous decisions to publish the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret government study of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam – after the New York Times had been court ordered not to do so, and to proceed with the Watergate investigation earned her a reputation as an outstanding, fair and thorough journalist; committed to giving readers full access to important information.

As a businesswoman, Mrs. Graham led the Washington Post Company into a conglomerate of newspaper, broadcast, cable, and magazine properties. She believed that editorial excellence and profitability were interrelated. She served on numerous philanthropic boards and received countless awards in recognition of her accomplishments as a journalist, publisher, woman, and entrepreneur.

In 1998, Katharine Graham won the Pulitzer Prize for biography with her reminiscence, Personal History. Describing herself as originally a shy, insecure woman, unprepared for the responsibilities she inherited, she became successful and one of the most influential women of the century.