Susan Page


Susan Page is an American journalist and biographer, and the current Washington Bureau Chief for USA Today.

Education and early life

Page, a native of Wichita, Kansas, is a 1973 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where she was editor-in-chief of the Daily Northwestern, and has a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Pulitzer Fellow.
As a child, Page had two passions: music and journalism. She began studying oboe in the third grade and played it in school orchestras throughout her public school education. She was also the editor-in-chief of her high school yearbook, The Hoofbeats, and served as a reporter and editor for her high school newspaper, The Stampede. She considered attending music school, but ultimately decided to pursue journalism school at Northwestern University.

Work

Page has covered six White House administrations and 10 presidential elections, and interviewed the past nine presidents. She founded and hosts an award-winning video newsmaker series for USA Today, "Capital Download." She appears frequently on cable news networks as an analyst and often guest-hosted The Diane Rehm Show, which was syndicated on National Public Radio. She was the first woman to serve as music chairman of the Gridiron Club show and was the president of the club, the oldest association of journalists in Washington, in 2011. She was president of the White House Correspondents Association in 2000. She also served as chairman of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and has twice been a juror for the Pulitzer Prizes.
Her first book was published in 2019, a biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush titled The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty. Also in 2019, she signed a deal to write a biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tentatively titled Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Arc of Power.

Awards

She has won several awards for her work, including the Merriman Smith Memorial Award, the Aldo Beckman Memorial Award, the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and the Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for Washington Correspondence.

Private life

In 1982, she married Carl Leubsdorf, syndicated columnist and former Washington Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News, in a non-denominational ceremony in Washington, D.C.