Full-Time Staff

Geoffrey Cowan

Director

Geoffrey Cowan is a University Professor and the inaugural holder of the Annenberg Family Chair in Communication Leadership. He directs the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy. From 2010-2016, he was the founding President of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands. From 1996-2007, Cowan served as Dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Adam-Clayton-Powell-IIIAdam Clayton Powell III

Senior Fellow

Adam Clayton Powell III led CCLP’s initiative on election cybersecurity, in association with USC’s schools of business, engineering, law and public policy and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He has coordinated CCLP’s Washington DC programming, which includes monthly public forums on subjects including public diplomacy, national security and the future of communications.

Susan Goelz

Office Manager and Budget/Business Analyst

Susan Crookston Goelz is CCLP’s office manager and Professor Geoffrey Cowan’s administrative assistant. She is responsible for the Center’s budget administration, event coordination, office management and payroll administration, among other duties.

Jung-hwa (Judy) Kang

Coordinator of Washington, D.C. Programs

Jung-hwa “Judy” Kang is a public diplomat, researcher, and art exhibit curator. Judy graduated with a Master of Public Diplomacy (2018) where she was selected as a banner bearer on a commencement for the Annenberg School and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History (2014) where she was nominated as valedictorian. She received both degrees with summa cum laude from USC. She was a Cowan Scholar from 2015 to 2018. She is currently working on CCLP’s  Election Cybersecurity Initiative and Public Diplomacy Programs.

Grace Huang

Research Fellow

Grace Huang worked with CCLP as a Cowan Scholar throughout the 2021-2022 academic year and has joined the center full-time as the Research Fellow. She recently received her MSc and MA from the London School of Economics and USC Annenberg as part of LSE and USC’s Global Media and Communications joint master’s program. She obtained her bachelor’s degree from New York University (2020) in Media, Culture, and Communication. Having a passion for digital media and infrastructures, Grace actively engages with digital platform innovations from both technological and sociological perspectives.

Owen Foster

Junior Fellow

Owen Foster is the Junior Fellow at the CCLP, joining the center after completing a B.A. from Williams College in 2022. He studied politics at Exeter College, Oxford and at Williams completed a senior thesis on how cognitive biases can be harnessed to reduce political polarization. Previously he has worked for the John Hickenlooper Presidential Campaign, the Global Livingston Institute, the Search for Common Ground, and Scorpion for CBS. His work has focused on building trust as well as non-partisan efforts to connect communities to needed resources.

Election Cybersecurity Initiative Team Members

Sarah Mojarad

Sarah Mojarad is a Kavli Fellow and the USC Research Fellow in Disinformation and Misinformation in CCLP. She conducts workshops for the Election Cybersecurity Initiative and is a contributor to the “Expert’s Corner.” She is also a Lecturer in the Viterbi School of Engineering.

Her areas of expertise include misinformation, disinformation, social media, science communication, and pseudoscience.Prior to joining USC in 2017, Sarah was a lecturer in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Division at the California Institute of Technology.

Cliff Neuman

Dr. Clifford Neuman is director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) and a faculty member in the Computer Science Department in the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC.  Dr. Neuman earned a Bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and subsequently worked at Project Athena. 

He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington.  Dr. Neuman conducts research in distributed systems, computer security, Critical Infrastructure Protection, electronic commerce and computer security for election systems. 

He is the principal designer of Kerberos authentication system, which among other deployments, provides user authentication for most major networked systems today. Dr. Neuman also developed the NetCheque and NetCash payment systems, and the Prospero Directory Service

Dave Quast

Dave Quast is a senior Vice President at Red Banyan, specializing in crisis and issues management, corporate reputation, and positioning, and public affairs. He is also an adjunct professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. He regularly conducts crisis communications workshops in conjunction with USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative in all 50 states.

Dave has counseled clients in the corporate, legal, and political arenas for nearly 30 years, leading strategic communications engagements across a variety of industries, including energy, industrials, legal and professional services, nonprofit and healthcare, financial services, and technology.