Senior Fellows

CCLP Senior Fellows are a diverse group of leaders, journalists, writers, authors, researchers, academics, and creators who advance the Center’s mission through frequent collaboration.

Recent Collaborators

Harry Litman

Harry Litman is a lawyer, law professor, and legal commentator. He is the creator, host, and executive producer of the Talking Feds podcast, a roundtable with prominent political and legal figures discussing issues of the day as well as foundational issues in law and government. Formerly he was the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He served previously as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, an Assistant United States Attorney, and a Special Assistant United States Attorney.

Sylvester Monroe

Sylvester Monroe served as an Assistant Foreign Editor at The Washington Post in charge of reporting from Europe and South Asia from 2014 to December 2017. During his storied career, Monroe has had a variety of important assignments with Newsweek, TIME, The San Jose Mercury News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Ebony. He is currently working on a book about the black men in Harvard’s 1973 graduating class.

Barbara Starr

Barbara Starr is a renowned journalist, Emmy award winning producer, and former CNN Pentagon correspondent. Starr spent 21 years on CNN as Pentagon correspondent reporting from hotspots including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Horn of Africa and the Chinese-North Korean border. Barbara Starr has become one of the most recognizable faces in conflict reporting.

Full List of Senior Fellows

Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is a journalist, consultant, and author with 20 years of experience in national security, digital security, and political journalism. He created the USC Annenberg Digital Security Initiative, developed a counter-disinformation curriculum for the USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative, and was previously politics editor for The Atlantic.

Neal A. Baer

Neal A. Baer, M.D. is a Harvard-trained physician, practicing pediatrician, and award-winning television writer and producer. He formerly served as executive producer of the series Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and ER. He is currently developing his genetic thriller drama The Edit with Echo Lake Entertainment.

Ev Boyle

Ev is an Investment Principal at New Media Ventures, a mission-driven venture fund and investor network focused on innovation to advance progressive change. Prior to joining NMV, Ev held a variety of roles in progressive politics, civic tech, and academia. He was the executive director of LA-Tech.org, the associate director of the Center on Communication Leadership & Policy at USC’s Annenberg School, and the co-founder of Glassbooth, a civic education nonprofit that reached millions of voters.

Jess Cagle

Jess Cagle hosts “The Jess Cagle Show” on Sirius XM. An award-winning journalist, he was previously the Editor-in-Chief of People, where he expanded TV and video programming, integrated print and digital operations, and grew the brand’s audience to 100 million. Cagle also worked as a Senior Editor at TIME and as the Editor of Entertainment Weekly.

Craig Calhoun

Craig Calhoun is the University Professor of Social Sciences at Arizona State University and Senior Advisor to the Berggruen Institute. From 2012-2016, he was the Director and President of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

John F. Cooke

A longtime leader in business, education and the arts, John F. Cooke has been a senior executive at The Walt Disney Company, Executive Vice President and Trustee of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and Executive Vice President of Times Mirror Cable Television. Cooke is currently a member of the Colorado Forum, an organization established in 1978 to create an informed objective voice on critical public policy issues, and he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

David Corvo

David Corvo is a long-time television journalist who for the last two decades was the Senior Executive Producer of Primetime News for NBC News. In that role, Corvo produced “Dateline NBC,” the longest-running series in NBC primetime history and expanded its distribution to include NBC, cable and broadcast syndication, streaming and podcasts. He received multiple Emmy, DuPont and Peabody awards for his work on Dateline and many other news specials.

Ellis Cose

Ellis Cose is the author of a dozen books on issues of national and international concern, including the best-selling The Rage of a Privileged Class; The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America; and DEMOCRACY, IF WE CAN KEEP IT: The ACLU’s 100-Year Fight for Rights in America, the definitive history of the American Civil Liberties Union. Cose is currently a columnist and member of the board of contributors for USA Today and a contributing columnist for Yahoo News.

Jeremy Curtin

Jeremy Curtin served until December 2009 as coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs in the U.S. State Department, where he was the government’s senior public diplomacy officer.

John Dean

John Dean is a CNN News contributor, analyst and author. His recent books include Authoritarian Nightmare (2020), Blind Ambition: The White House Years (2016), and The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (2014). He served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973.

Michael Duffy

Michael Duffy is the Opinions Editor-at-Large of The Washington Post.  Before joining the Post, he spent over three decades at TIME magazine, where he served, among other roles, as correspondent, Washington bureau chief, deputy managing editor and editorial director of Timeinc.  He has co-authored two New York Times bestselling presidential histories, including The Presidents Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity.

Deborah Fallows

Deborah Fallows is a linguist and writer. She is the co-author of the recent book Our Towns, and also wrote two other books, Dreaming in Chinese and A Mother’s Work. Her work has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Monthly.

James Fallows

Award-winning writer and journalist James Fallows is currently a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has written twelve books, including the recent Our Towns (with Senior Fellow and wife Deb Fallows), and previously served as the editor of US News & World Report. Early in his career, he served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief White House speechwriter.

Jonathan Fanton

Jonathan Fanton is President Emeritus of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Fanton served as Interim Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014. He previously was President of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Charlie Firestone

Charlie Firestone was the founding president of the Rose Bowl Institute, a position he held until December 2023. The Rose Bowl Institute champions sportsmanship, leadership, and citizenship, and leverages the power of sports to unite people everywhere. Previously, he was a Vice President and Executive Vice President of The Aspen Institute, and for 30 years was the Executive Director of its Communications and Society Program.

Dorothy Gilliam

Dorothy Gilliam is an American journalist and author of the book Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America (2019). She was the first African-American female reporter at The Washington Post. Gilliam served as president of the National Association of Black Journalists and created the Young Journalists Development Program to bring more young people into the world of journalism.

Dan Glickman

Dan Glickman is a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C and the author of the book Laughing at Myself: My Education in Congress, on the Farm, and at the Movies. He previously served as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture from 1995-2001 and as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Matthew Graham

Matthew Graham is the Senior Director of Digital Strategy for NBC Sports Bay Area and California. He previously held positions as Vice President (Head of Product) for the Los Angeles Times and as Vice President of audience and product at USA TODAY Sports.

David Henderson

David Henderson is an Emmy Award-winning former investigative journalist and Asia bureau chief at CBS News. He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, India, and Pakistan. David later advised executives on better ways to communicate and control crisis situations. He is the author of three books on news in the digital era.

Peter Hirshberg

Peter Hirshberg is the CEO and Co-Founder of Lighthouse.one, which revitalizes American cities by matching investors to projects and Opportunity Zones, and Venture Partner to the Catalyst Opportunity Zone Impact Fund. As an innovation adviser to cities and companies, he also serves as the Chairman and Co-Founder of two centers of urban innovation: the Maker City Project and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

Kirk Wallace Johnson

Kirk Wallace Johnson is the founder of the List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies and the author of The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist. His next book, The Fishermen and the Dragon, will be published by Viking in 2021.

Cinny Kennard

Cinny Kennard is Executive Director at The Annenberg Foundation. Previously, she was Senior Vice President of Programming at the Smithsonian Institution and served as the first Managing Director of NPR West from 2003 to 2009.

Bruce Koon

Bruce Koon is a pioneering journalist who formerly served as News Director for KQED for eight years. He was a founding board member of the Online News Association and served two terms as president. He currently is a researcher who examines newsroom diversity and inclusion and a journalism educator who mentors college and high school students and mid-career journalists.

Cindi Leive

Cindi Leive is the co-founder of the feminist media collective The Meteor and the former editor-in-chief of both Glamour and Self. She is a journalist and a cultural critic who speaks frequently about women, media and the arts. Leive is also the co-producer of several New York Times bestsellers, including the 2018 book Together We Rise, about the making of the women’s march.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Daughters of Kobani (2021), Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015) and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011). Lemmon currently serves as Partner, Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Policy Officer at the national security technology firm Shield AI.

Jill Leovy

Jill Leovy is a nonfiction author and Harvard Sociology fellow. She wrote  “Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America”, a New York Times bestseller, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and California Book Award winner for nonfiction. Leovy also worked for two decades as a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times.

Jack Lerner

Jack Lerner is a Clinical Professor of Law at the UC Irvine School of Law and the Director of the Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic.

Harry Litman

Harry Litman is a lawyer, law professor, and legal commentator. He is the creator, host, and executive producer of the Talking Feds podcast, a roundtable with prominent political and legal figures discussing issues of the day as well as foundational issues in law and government. Formerly he was the United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He served previously as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Department of Justice, an Assistant United States Attorney, and a Special Assistant United States Attorney.

John Markoff

John Markoff, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a Writer in Residence at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, where he is currently researching a biography of Stewart Brand. He wrote for The New York Times’ science and technology beat for 28 years, where he was widely regarded as the paper’s star technology reporter.

Nicco Mele

Nicco Mele is managing director at the Draper Richards Kapland Foundation and a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was previously the director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. He has also served as Senior Vice President and Deputy Publisher of the Los Angeles Times and as the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Journalism at the University of Southern California.

Sylvester Monroe

Sylvester Monroe  is a journalist and best-selling author who recently served as an Assistant Foreign Editor at The Washington Post. Over the course of his career, Monroe has written for Newsweek, TIME, The San Jose Mercury News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Ebony. He is currently working on a book about the black men in Harvard’s 1973 graduating class.

Geneva Overholser

Geneva Overholser served as director of USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism from 2008 until 2013 and was previously editor of The Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995, where she led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. While at the Register, she also earned recognition as Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation and was named “The Best in the Business” by American Journalism Review.

Adam Clayton Powell III

Adam Clayton Powell III was CCLP’s Director of Washington Programs, leading CCLP’s Google-funded bipartisan initiative on election cybersecurity, in association with six schools across USC. He also leads public forums on subjects ranging from public service and online media to the future of journalism.

Todd S. Purdum

Todd Purdum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair  and has previously worked as a staff writer for The Atlantic and POLITICO. He wrote for The New York Times for 23 years, covering politics from city hall to the White House.

Kit Rachlis

Kit Rachlis has been the Senior Editor of The California Sunday Morning since 2014. He is the former Editor in Chief of the Washington, D.C. based, political magazine The American Prospect and is an award-winning editor who spent nearly a decade as editor-in-chief of Los Angeles magazine.

Brian Sandoval

Brian Sandoval is president of the University of Nevada, Reno. He served as Governor of Nevada from 2011-2019.

Orville Schell

Orville Schell is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York City. He was previously dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Schnur

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy, and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications, where he teaches courses in politics, communications and leadership. He founded the USC/LA Times statewide political poll, previously worked on four presidential and three California gubernatorial campaigns, and served as the national director of communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of US Senator John McCain.

George F. Schweitzer

George Schweitzer is a media marketing leader best known for helping transform CBS into America’s Most-Watched Network. In his almost 3 decades leading CBS Marketing, he was responsible for promoting many of TV’s biggest entertainment, news and sports franchises.

Dan Schwerin

Dan Schwerin is the co-founder of Evergreen Strategy Group, a policy-focused communication consulting firm. He served as Director of Speechwriting for Secretary Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid.

Charles Sennott

Charles Sennott is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The GroundTruth Project, a non-profit news organization which serves as the home of Report for America and Report for the World. He is an award-winning correspondent, best-selling author and editor with 40 years of experience in international, national and local journalism. A leading social entrepreneur in new media, Sennott in 2009 became the co-founder of GlobalPost, an acclaimed international news website. He then went on to launch GroundTruth and served as its CEO and Editor-in-Chief from 2012 to 2022. In 2017, GroundTruth launched its local reporting initiative, Report for America, and in 2021 launched an international, sister program, Report for the World.

Derek Shearer

Former U.S. Ambassador to Finland Derek Shearer is Chevalier Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He handles the college’s international relations, directing the expansion of its international affairs programs, and serves as Director of the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs.

Barbara Starr

Barbara Starr is a renowned journalist, Emmy award winning producer, and former CNN Pentagon correspondent. Starr spent 21 years on CNN as Pentagon correspondent reporting from hotspots including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the Horn of Africa and the Chinese-North Korean border. Barbara Starr has become one of the most recognizable faces in conflict reporting.

Anna Mailaka Tubbs

Anna Tubbs is the author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. She holds a Ph.D in Sociology and Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Anthropology from Stanford University. Anna’s research, writing, and talks are centered on gender and race issues in the U.S., especially as these relate to the pervasive erasure of Black women.

Michael Tubbs

Michael Tubbs is the author of The Deeper The Roots: A Story of Hope and Home and currently serves as the executive chairman of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, the founder of Ending Poverty in California (EPIC), and as the special advisor for Governor Gavin Newsom for Economic Mobility and Opportunity. Previously, Tubbs served as the first Black mayor of Stockton, CA and the youngest mayor of a major city in American history.

Greta Van Susteren

A 28 year cable news veteran, Greta Van Susteren is host of The Record, a nationwide news show on Newsmax TV that airs Monday-Friday 6pm EST across multiple platforms. She was recently named one of the world’s 100 most powerful women by Forbes Magazine and has served as a host for three major news networks, CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC.

David Westphal

David Westphal is an independent journalist who recently taught as an adjunct professor of journalism in the Studio 20 digital program at New York University. Previously, he was Editor-in-Chief of the California HealthCare Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting and Washington editor of McClatchy Newspapers.

Morley Winograd

Morley Winograd is the co-author of three books on the millennial generation and most recently co-authored Healing American Democracy: Going Local with Mike Hais and Doug Ross. He is also President of the nonprofit Campaign for Free College and previously served as senior policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore.

Jessica Yellin

Jessica Yellin is the founder of #NewsNotNoise, which provides daily news reports on Instagram, and the author of Savage News. Over the course of her career as a political journalist, she has served as CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent and reported for ABC and MSNBC.

Narda Zacchino

Narda Zacchino is an author and award-winning journalist. She is currently a Senior Editor for Reveal and has served as a top editor at the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her most recent book, California Comeback: How a “Failed State” Became a Model for the Nation, was released in 2016.

Senior Policy Fellow

Geoffrey Baum

Geoffrey Baum currently serves as Executive Director for Michelson Philanthropies, which includes the Michelson Medical Research Foundation, Michelson 20MM Foundation, Michelson Found Animals Foundation, and the Michelson Center for Public Policy.  A former C-SPAN executive producer, he is past president and a member of the California Community Colleges board of governors and former managing director of the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy.

Global Communication Policy Fellow

Nick Cull

Nick Cull is a professor of Public Diplomacy at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. Originally from the UK he is a well-known writer and historian on issues of communication, public engagement and international relations.

Technology Fellow

Max Hao Lu

Max is the Special Project Lead for Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum, a platform that aims to build a more responsible future by enabling global leaders from East and West to forge common ground.  Max previously served as Founding Director of  the Innovation Lab and as Director of Academic Partnerships and Research at the Los Angeles Times. He also co-founded MannLab with Prof. Steve Mann, who is commonly known as the “Father of Wearable Computing.”