Connie Schultz is a nationally syndicated columnist for The Plain Dealer andCreators Syndicate, and a regular essayist for Parade magazine. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in columns that judges praised for providing "a voice for the underdog and the underprivileged."

During the 2008 presidential race, Schultz was a frequent guest on The Charlie Rose Show and also offered her Midwesterner's perspective on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher and C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

She is the author of two books published by Random House: ...And His Lovely Wife, a memoir about her husband Sherrod Brown's successful 2006 race for the U.S. Senate, and Life Happens - And Other Unavoidable Truths, a collection of essays.

In 2005, Schultz won a Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and a National Headliner Award, both for commentary. She was a 2003 Pulitzer Prize finalist in feature writing for her series, "The Burden of Innocence," which chronicled the ordeal of Michael Green, who was imprisoned for 13 years for a rape he did not commit. The week after Schultz's series ran, the real rapist turned himself in after reading her stories. The series won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Social Justice Reporting, the National Headliner Award's Best of Show and journalism awards from Harvard and Columbia universities.

In 2004, Schultz won the Batten Medal, which honors "a body of journalistic work that reflects compassion, courage, humanity and a deep concern for the underdog." Recently, the Urban League of Greater Cleveland awarded Schultz the Whitney M. Young Humanitarian Award.

Schultz and her husband have four grown children, one grandson, and a puppy, Franklin. She has moderated three prior Connecticut Forums, including GOD

in 2008, A World of Change in 2009 and The End of Civility? in 2010.