Mark K. Updegrove

He has also interviewed First Ladies Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, and Rosalynn Carter; Vice Presidents Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, and Walter Mondale; Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Neil Gorsuch; Cabinet secretaries Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, Eric Holder, and John Kerry; and others including: Mikhail Gorbachev, Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, John Glenn, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dan Rather, Hank Aaron, Ken Burns, Bryan Cranston, Woody Harrelson, Rob Reiner, Robert Redford, and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Additionally, Updegrove has also appeared in numerous documentaries and original series including PBS’ The White House: The Inside Story; CNN’s The Bush Years, and Race for the White House; MSNBC's Betrayal: The Plot that Won the White House; NFL Films' Sigma Chi and the Mayflower Move / the Baltimore Colts; and History TV's Presidents at War, The Ultimate Guide to the Presidents, and What the Hell's the Presidency For?

Updegrove has lectured at numerous colleges and universities, including Harvard, Rice, the University of Virginia. He gave the graduation speech for Texas State University in 2019.

In December 2017, Updegrove was named the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas, after serving briefly as the inaugural CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum. From 2009 to 2017, he was the fourth director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.

Updegrove's most recent book, The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, was released in November 2017 with exclusive stories featured in the New York Times and on CNN, which reported on the book's revelations about the Bushes’ views on Donald Trump. Through exclusive interviews with Updegrove, the book quotes former President George H.W. Bush as calling Donald Trump "a blowhard, and saying flatly, "I don't like him," while former President George W. Bush is quoted as saying, "Wow, this guy doesn't know what it means to be president." When asked for his reaction to the Bushes' comments, President Trump, en route to Tokyo for a thirteen-day tour of Asia, said, "I'll comment after we come back. I don't want to make headlines. I don't want to make their move successful."

In April 2016, Updegrove hosted the Vietnam War Summit, a three-day conference, featuring a keynote address by then Secretary of State John Kerry. Among the additional participants were Henry Kissinger, Ken Burns, Tom Hayden and Bob Kerrey.

As director of the LBJ Library, in 2014, Updegrove hosted the Civil Rights Summit, an historic three-day conference around the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, which included a keynote address by then President Barack Obama and programs with former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, as well as programs with many civil rights luminaries including Julian Bond, John Lewis, and Andrew Young. The summit garnered international news coverage, including the New York Times profile on Updegrove titled, "Chronicler of Presidents Brings Four Together."

Updegrove's December 2014 Politico article, What 'Selma' Gets Wrong, ignited a controversy over the portrayal of Lyndon Johnson as an obstructionist on voting rights in the film Selma, touching off a debate about the importance of accuracy in films based on historic events. In January 2015, Updegrove addressed the issue on CBS' Face the Nation.

Early in his tenure at the library, Updegrove oversaw the $11 million renovation of the library's core exhibit on Lyndon Johnson and his administration, which opened in December 2012.

Mark K. Updegrove (born August 25, 1961) is an American author, historian, journalist, and Presidential Historian for ABC News. He is the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas. Previously, he served as the director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum for eight years. He is the author of four books including his latest, The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, published in 2017.

Updegrove was born outside Philadelphia in Abington, PA, on Aug. 25, 1961. He attended high school at the George School, which honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2015. In 1984, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park.