Only one person in the country receives the National Edward R. Murrow Award for Writing each year. This year and last year that honor went to Seattle Community Colleges Television General Manager John Sharify. John oversees the Educational Channel, as well as its IRIS Education. The six time National Edward R. Murrow Award recipient has also been nominated for 119 Emmys, and received 31 Emmy Awards, including the Emmy for top reporter in the Northwest five times, and the top writer in the region six times.

After John left KOMO TV in August 2007, he began working as a 'storyteller' for the Hope Heart Institute. In addition, he worked as a contributing correspondent for Seattle's PBS station KCTS, and as the Seattle Producer for CBS 48 Hours. He was also a contributing writer for the series "Forever New Orleans". While John started his reporting career in New York City at WPIX TV 27 years ago, it is at KOMO, and Seattle where John grew as a journalist and delivered his signature stories that fed the soul and lifted the spirits of his viewers. John's 'People Helper' stories for the station helped raise over six million dollars to help people in the community.

John is honored to begin serving his third year as President of the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, NATAS.

John graduated from Princeton University, where he majored in Political Science and minored in Near Eastern Studies. He sang with the Princeton Tigertones and performed with Princeton's Triangle Club. John also has a Master of Fine arts degree in Film Directing from Columbia University, studying under Oscar winning filmmaker Milos Forman.

John fine-tunes his craft by doing freelance writing for organizations he believes in and inspires other broadcast journalists to hone their skills by presenting workshops throughout the Northwest, through NATAS' Emmy on the Road program. In the spring of 2006 and 2007, John was on the faculty of the National Press Photographers Association's Advanced Storytelling Workshop in Lexington, KY. John also taught an advanced broadcast journalism course at the University of Washington in the spring of 2006. In the summer of 2008, John appeared in an outdoor production of 'South Pacific' in Fall City, WA in the role of Captain Brackett.