Biography
Susan King is an accomplished leader at the highest tiers of journalism, government, philanthropy, strategic communications, and university life. A change-agent in every arena she engages, she draws on experience, wisdom, and networks built over a distinguished career. For the past twenty years, King has combined her passion for journalism and philanthropy to focus on digital disruption and how it has changed the world of communications.
As John Thomas Kerr Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for 10 years until the end of 2021, King enhanced a highly collaborative digital journalism curriculum. For six of the last seven years under King’s leadership, the school won the Hearst National Championship, the Pulitzer Prize of student journalism. She also established a strong financial foundation raising more than $85M to support the school. To equip storytellers with skills and technology to publish across ever changing digital platforms, King envisioned and built the state-of-the-art Curtis Media Center that offers a first-floor windowed studio and high-tech lab-classrooms. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invested in the Knight Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media while King was dean and supported the Knight Learning Lab, a 21st Century lecture hall within the school.
Before serving as dean of Hussman, King launched and led the Carnegie Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where she served as vice president for external affairs and set priorities and strategies for communications and engagement. She also launched and administered the biennial Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy and re-invigorated the Carnegie family of institutions. King led the Carnegie Knight Initiative, focused on 11 top journalism schools, to reimagine journalism curriculum for the digital era.
King served in the Clinton administration, confirmed by the Senate twice as assistant secretary for public affairs in the Department of Labor, under Secretaries Bob Reich and Alexis Herman. She worked with Andrew Cuomo in his early months as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. She describes her career in government as working at the nexus of journalism and policy.
In a broadcast career spanning more than 20 years, King started as a reporter at WGR-TV in Buffalo, N.Y., then worked in the nation’s capital as a national network correspondent and local anchor. She began her Washington, D.C., career at WTOP-TV, then moved to WGR-TV and WJLA-TV. She was ABC News White House correspondent during the Reagan administration and was perhaps best known for “Cover Story,” her signature reports that won two Emmys. She also hosted NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” and contributed to CNN.
King is active in nonprofit board work. Along with women colleagues in Washington, she founded the International Women’s Media Foundation in 1990, recognized today as one of journalism’s key free press nonprofits. She is on IWMF’s advisory committee and active in its global grant giving process. King and the other founders were honored with the foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. She is a director of National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management and advisor to NC Local News Workshop. She has served as a director on a number of boards including BBC’s Media Action, Carnegie Council on International Ethics, & WUNC Public Radio. She was a trustee at Fairfield University and Marymount College, Tarrytown, her alma maters. In 2019 King was named Scripps Howard Administrator of the Year, awarded by the Scripps Howard Foundation in recognition of excellence as dean. She was inducted into the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2014 and North Carolina’s Media and Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Page Society, IWF New York and Belizean Grove.